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Why Is the Department of Justice Prosecuting a Leading Civil Rights Group?

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2026 //
6

The Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center by paying informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

CNN wrote:

The Justice Department alleges in the criminal case brought last month that the Southern Poverty Law Center — which has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump and other Republicans for labeling right-wing organizations as hate groups — defrauded donors by not informing them of secret payments to hate group members to act as informants.

The Justice Department alleges that SPLC has funneled $3 million to hate groups like the KKK, Unite the Right, and the Aryan Nations. SPLC also listed Moms for Liberty as a hate group, and M4L said that SPLC should be shut down.

One of the specialties of SPLC is compiling a list of hate groups and individuals who spread hate.

As an organization that was created to oppose racial injustice in the South, SPLC became a natural target for the GOP vengeance campaign.

The odd thing about the suit is that SPLC paid infiltrators, not the groups themselves.

This is a brazen assault on a significant civil rights group that has tangled with hate-groups for more than 50 years.

It is also a demonstration of the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department, turning it into a partisan cudgel.

Some large corporations have paused their charitable gifts to SPLC, including a division of Schwab that manages charitable gifts, Fidelity, and vanguard.

It was noted on Twitter that Stephen Miller, Trump’s policy advisor, is in the SPLC list of extremists.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Trump

Secretary of Energy’s Former Company Made Huge Profits, Paid No Taxes

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2026 //
1

Finished paying your taxes? I bet you didn’t do as well as Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Politico reported that the company founded made huge profits and paid no taxes. In fact, his company got a refund! It’s Trump tax policy at work for the 1%.

Politico wrote:

The company founded and formerly run by Energy Secretary Chris Wright paid no federal corporate income taxes last year, according to its regulatory filings, and actually got more than $10 million back from the IRS.

Liberty Energy, the oil field services company Wright founded in 2011 but left last year to join the Trump administration, was among several energy companies included in a report issued Tuesday by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy naming 88 companies that together made more than $105 billion before taxes last year but paid no federal corporate income taxes.

Liberty recorded net income before taxes of $193 million last year but received more than $10 million back in tax benefits, according to its latest annual financial disclosure. The company paid $33 million in federal taxes for the 2024 tax year after making a net income of $403 million before taxes.

Categories Environment, Ethics, For-Profit, Trump

Hegseth Is Taking Control of Independent “Stars and Stripes,” a Military Publication

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2026 //
3

William Becker is a prominent environmental activist. He is also a veteran and at one point during his service, he wrote for “Stars and Stripes.”

It’s hard to keep track of the latest Trump administration outraged, but one of the latest is that Secretary of DEFENSE Pete Hegseth is taking control of “Stars and Stripes” so it will be an outlet for Pentagon propaganda and Hegseth’s brand of Christian nationalism and straight white male supremacy.

Becker wrote about this travesty at The Hill, a widely read D.C. publication:

One of the classic sounds of the Vietnam War was the voice that famously boomed,  “GOOOOD MORNING, VIET-NAM”  over Armed Forces Radio each day. 

The Army’s daily newspaper was an equally important fixture. Stars and Stripes was founded by Union soldiers during the Civil War. It was unique: a military publication independent from the brass, delivered to the troops along “the world’s most dangerous paper routes.”

During World War II, the paper shifted from a weekly to a daily publication, serving up national and international news along with stories from the theaters in Europe, Asia and, most recently, the Middle East. The paper had always been independent of military control. In the late 1980s, Congress required it.

Now, the Pentagon appears ready to make it a mouthpiece for Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s carefully coiffed secretary of Defense with battle-hungry biceps. We can expect the storied newspaper to acquire all the dignity of a British tabloid, becoming the manosphere’s daily drumbeat against “stupid rules of engagement” and “tepid legalities” like international law and the Geneva Conventions.

I have a dog in this fight. I was an Army sergeant who served as a combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes in Vietnam during 1966 and 1967. There were just a few of us. We didn’t wear rank or military uniforms. We traveled throughout South Vietnam, embedding ourselves in combat operations to give the soldiers’ perspectives on the war. At age 19, I competed hour by hour with veteran broadcast and newspaper reporters, the best in the business.

It wasn’t always about battle and bloodshed. We also wrote and photographed the military’s efforts to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. Based on Hegseth’s podium performances, “woke” coverage like that won’t appear in the paper. We can’t expect stories about the U.S. military as peacekeepers and rescuers during global disasters. We won’t read about the quiet ethos of professional soldiers. We’ll be bombarded with saturation coverage of how young men “intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill our enemies.”

Until last week, the newspaper’s independence was defended by an ombudsman, most recently Jacqueline Smith. She has been fired by the Pentagon. A spokesman explained that the department is taking over control of the paper to “modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

In other words, Stars and Stripes is being swept up in the conservative tide taking over the news and entertainment media in the U.S. But as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich notes, “Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently than the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or one developing small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.” 

In 1966, Stars and Stripes featured my photos of the Philippine army, one of America’s allies in the war, handing out rice to villagers from the back of a truck. Now, we can anticipate that it won’t waste ink on such wokeness; it will report how God wants maximum lethality with minimum morality to “kill people and break things,” and deliver divine retribution with “overwhelming and punishing violence against the enemy.“

One of the problems with the Pentagon’s effort to “intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill our enemies” is that President Trump and Hegseth are working overtime to make enemies out of friends. Hegseth’s chief policy adviser suggests punishing NATO for not joining the U.S. in Trump’s war against Iran. Trump accuses NATO of being a “paper tiger” for not helping to open the Strait of Hormuz. 

Yet neither man apparently consulted with or advised NATO before launching the Iran war. NATO nations are understandably reluctant to join Trump in the international crimes he threatens. 

Trump has hardly been a good ally. He has soured relations with Europe with his threats to take Greenland by force and his punitive trade tariffs. In 2018, he called the hard-fought nuclear weapons agreement with Iran “decaying and rotten” and pulled out of it, leaving co-signers France, Germany and the United Kingdom in the lurch. 

He has insulted allies by failing to acknowledge their support after 9/11. He accused NATO of avoiding the front lines in the Afghanistan war, even though 1,000 servicemembers from European countries died in the conflict. He even suggested that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough for its own defense.

Hegseth and Trump have poisoned our relationship with allies. Will they now try to poison the views of the rank-and-file military? Stars and Stripes currently reaches 1.4 million people and gets 26 million page views on its digital edition. It may take a boycott by the rank-and-file or a crackdown by Congress to save it. 

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and a contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Categories Censorship, Freedom of the Press, Propaganda, Trump

Why Did Washington Press Corps Invite Trump to Dinner?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2026 //
16

Kevin Cullen, a columnist for The Boston Globe, lambasted the Washington press corps for inviting Trump to be their speaker. What did they expect he would say? Did they want to be insulted as “enemies of the people” and “fake news”?

Sure, it’s customary to invite the President. But did anyone expect Trump to forget about his hatred of the media? Cullen thinks they should be more careful in choosing a speaker, like picking someone who appreciates the First Amendment.

He wrote:

So many questions after a deranged, thankfully inept gunman tried to force his way into the White House Correspondents’ Association gala, where President Trump was a guest.

The biggest one being: Why was Trump there in the first place?

Like all fascists, Trump hates a free press and has done his level best to humiliate, intimidate, harm, cancel, and even prosecute journalists and news outlets. Like all authoritarians, he has tried to limit press scrutiny of himself and his administration.

So what on earth were the White House press corps thinking when it invited this guy to their annual dress-up party?

It’s like inviting your obnoxious neighbor to a family barbecue after he relieves himself in your pool.

It’s like inviting a jackal to a tea party for a bunch of cute little bunny rabbits.

Let’s roll the tape:

In 2015, when he was running for president, Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a congenital joint condition. Trump was just getting warmed up.

In 2017, after a Republican congressional candidate in Montana assaulted and body slammed a reporter for The Guardian, Trump voiced support for the attacker, saying, “He’s my kind of guy.”

In 2020, after MSNBC’s Ali Velshi was hit by a rubber bullet during a protest after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Trump called it a “beautiful sight.” Trump misidentified Velshi as being with CNN, but, hey, all the fake news is all the same to Trump anyway.

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in November 2024, Trump stood behind bulletproof glass and reassured his supporters he was safe, noting that anyone who tried to shoot him would have to shoot through a bunch of journalists standing in front of him, adding, “I wouldn’t mind that so much.”

More recently, the FBI, led by Kash Patel, the laughably unqualified frat bro whom Trump appointed as FBI director, launched an investigation of Elizabeth Williamson, a New York Times reporter who had the temerity to point out that the FBI is spending untold taxpayer dollars providing a SWAT team to “protect” Patel’s girlfriend, Weymouth’s own Alexis Wilkins, when she engages in risky public acts like getting her hair done.

Even more recently, after Saturday’s attack, Trump insulted CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and questioned her professionalism, calling her a “disgrace” for asking a question about the gunman’s manifesto.

If you’re noticing a pattern here, Trump really doesn’t like women journalists who question him.

I could go on — and I haven’t even mentioned the shakedowns of all the networks, and Trump using his influence so Edward R. Murrow’s storied CBS News becomes more like Fox News Lite — but you get the point. 

And yet, Trump’s press secretary stood before journalists after Saturday’s attack and claimed, with a straight face, that the leftist press and Democrats are responsible for the violent rhetoric that leads to attacks like the one at the Washington Hilton.

So what did the Washington press corps think was going to happen when it gave Trump a platform at its shindig?

Did they think he would have some Jeffersonian conversion, pronouncing that if given the choice between a government without journalism or journalism without government, he would choose the latter?

Thomas Jefferson believed strongly in the idea of a free press that would act as a watchdog against government corruption and overreach.

Trump hates a free press for those very same reasons. He doesn’t want the public to know about his cons, about him using government to enrich his family and his cronies. He can’t stand the idea of the press, or anyone, questioning his judgment, or pointing out the folly of his ways, about him starting a needless war when he ran for president claiming he would never start a needless war.

Trump resembles not Thomas Jefferson, but George Jefferson, the TV character who hated everyone and everything. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Trump is more familiar with George Jefferson than Thomas Jefferson.

Why give Trump a platform to spew his fascist hatred of a robust, free press?….

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Fake News, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Trump’s Face and Signature on the New Passport?

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
10

The Bulwark reported that the State Departnent plans to put Donald Trump’s face and signature on new passports. The story has since been confirmed by major media, including The New York Times.

I breathe a sigh of relief. I renewed my passport last year. It doesn’t expire until 2035.

According to Benjamin Parker in The Bulwark:

THE STATE DEPARTMENT IS CLOSE TO FINALIZING a radical redesign of the U.S. passport to include a picture of President Donald Trump, The Bulwark has learned from two sources with knowledge of the redesign, including one who shared images currently under consideration.


The redesign is ostensibly part of a larger celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence. It comes as the Treasury Department prepares to produce coins featuring Trump’s image—both a controversial $1 coin in general circulation1 and an “as large as possible” commemorative gold coin—and as the National Park Service emblazons Trump’s face on its park passes. Both of those redesigns were justified as being part of the 250th anniversary celebration.


According to the images of the passport redesign provided to The Bulwark, the inside cover of the new State Department-issued document will feature a scowling Trump—taken from his second inaugural portrait—superimposed over the Declaration of Independence, as well as the president’s signature in gold.

Categories Trump

Dan Rather: Trump’s War on Science Is Outrageous!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
6

Dan Rather, the esteemed journalist, wrote on his blog Steady about the dreadful consequences of Trump’s defunding of science, medicine, and public health.

But on Friday night, when we weren’t looking for a controversial announcement, Trump fired every single member of the 24-person National Science Board. Why? The simplest answer is that the members of the board were not his sycophants. They allegiance is to science, not to the person of Donald J. Trump. He couldn’t control them. They had to go.

Dan Rather wrote:

We toss around terms like “American exceptionalism” far too easily. But there is little debate that, in areas of science and medicine, this country has long been the world leader. We have more top scientists, elite doctors, and preeminent researchers than anywhere else. Their work has meant people live longer, healthier lives.

It is also a cornerstone of American influence around the world.

Scientific and medical research requires significant funding. It has thrived because our elected officials have had the political will to provide a financial pipeline to the public and private sectors.

President Donald Trump is severing that lifeline.

As the mainstream media was renting tuxedos and getting manicures ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was busy pounding nails into the coffin of the American scientific research community.

Tucked away on Friday evening, in a terse, two-line email, the White House personnel office fired the entire National Science Board. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” the email read.

No reason was given in the email, and the White House has had no additional comment on the firings.

The independent, 24-person board is made up of top scientists and engineers who serve staggered, six-year terms, to ensure overlap between presidential administrations. They are chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

The board advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports a wide range of research, from Antarctic exploration to quantum computing. NSF-funded research helped develop the MRI machine, LASIK eye surgery, and Wi-Fi, among many other innovations. It distributes $9 billion in research grants annually.

“[I]t is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership,” President Harry Truman said in 1950, when he established the board.

Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, called the Trump purge “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally,” to the Los Angeles Times.

Although the president is often reluctant to explain why he does imprudent and detrimental things, if one looks hard enough, a reason can usually be found. In this case, there may be two.

Reason one: to save face. The board was set to meet in early May to work on the release of a new report. The report outlines how the U.S., once the world leader in scientific research, is losing ground to China. If there is no board, the report can’t be released.

Reason two: money. In its 2026 budget, the Trump administration recommended a 55% cut to the NSF. After lobbying by the National Science Board, Congress rejected the White House’s proposal and funded the NSF at 2025 levels.

To avoid the same fate for this year’s budget, which again recommends slashing the foundation’s funding, Trump did away with the board before its members could convince members of Congress.

Friday’s firings are just the latest in Trump’s long list of objectionable actions to cast doubt on scientific findings and thwart research.

The United States has been on the cutting edge of scientific and medical research since the end of World War II. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been the world leader in funding biomedical research. A 2020 study found that NIH-funded research was associated with every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

But all of that is now changing. And Trump is to blame.

Science is “explicitly designed to counter human self-deception,” psychologist Steven Pinker told Chris Mooney in his book “The Republican War on Science.”

When deception is your modus operandi, you will naturally try to squash, discount, and demonize the truth. Being anti-science helps protect established special interests. Think climate change denialism and fossil fuel companies.

Trump called the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at last year’s United Nations General Assembly. He said this even as the globe is in the midst of the warmest 10-year span on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The NSF’s board is not the first the Trump administration has hamstrung. In June of last year Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, fired the 17-person vaccine advisory board and replaced many with vaccine skeptics. Trump himself replaced leading scientists with tech billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The administration significantly cut funding to the National Cancer Institute, once the gold standard for rigorous, evidence-based research. It no longer funds mRNA research, a revolutionary technology that has the potential to radically improve cancer care.

It canceled 22 separate mRNA contracts, including one working on a vaccine for brain cancer in children. Kennedy is an mRNA skeptic, claiming the vaccines aren’t safe while providing no evidence.

Pancreatic cancer is an incurable disease with a dismal survival rate. Fortunately for pancreatic cancer patients, research into an mRNA vaccine was far enough along that the cuts didn’t affect the very promising treatment.

BioNTech, a German biomedical research company, partnered with Moderna, an American company, to develop pancreatic cancer vaccines using mRNA technology.

The technology, already in development when the pandemic hit, was used to create the Covid vaccine. The Lancet estimated that mRNA vaccines prevented 14.4 to 19.8 million deaths just in the first year of use.

MRNA vaccine technology was in the pipeline thanks to billions of dollars in federal grants over decades. This allowed researchers to get Covid vaccines to market incredibly quickly. This technology is now helping people with pancreatic cancer live years longer than ever before.

Moderna is also using mRNA therapy in combination with other drugs to cut melanoma death rates by 49%. Applications for a variety of cancers are in the works.

Paul Darren Bieniasz, a British-American virologist, wrote in The Guardian, “If we continue the destructive course plotted by this administration, medicines that would otherwise have saved lives in future generations, will not be invented. Technologies that would have ensured future employment and prosperity in the U.S. will not be devised. Solutions that allow the generation of power while causing less damage to the environment, will never be developed. Clearly, if we decline to nurture science, the lives of future Americans will be shorter, sicker and poorer.”

While Donald Trump won’t be around to see that, millions of Americans will. Trump doesn’t like inconvenient truths. Science is a kaleidoscope of inconvenient truths. Rather than deal with them like the world leader he should be, he gaslights, he rages, he denies all.

And as with so much else in this administration, we the people pay the price.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Injustice, Medicine, Science, Stupid, Trump

DeSantis Proposes Gerrymander to Eliminate 4 Democratic Seats

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
3

Trying to retain control of the House of Representatives, Trump urged states to redraw their Congressional districts, although this redistricting usually happens every 10 years, after the census is reported. Texas, led by ultra-MAGA Governor Greg Abbott, was first to redistrict, creating a likely four additional Republican seats. California countered with a referendum, in which voters approved a temporary redistricting. Other states followed.

Now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has produced a new map, drawn to eliminate four Democratic members of Congress. If his map is approved (which is likely since Republicans have a supermajority in both legislative houses), the Florida delegation to Congress will have 24 Republicans and only 4 Democrats.

Forget the fact that Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymanders in 2010. The State Constitution also bans funding for religious schools, which was reaffirmed by voters in 2008. Now, billions of dollars are spent by the state for religious schools. The State Constitution. Just a piece of paper.

Please note that DeSantis gave his new map to FOX News before sharing it with the legislature.

The New York Times reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida proposed a redraw of the state’s congressional districts on Monday that could give Republicans as many as four new seats, an aggressive gambit that could also set the party up for some losses in the November midterms.

The map appears to eliminate two Democratic-held districts in South Florida, a third in the Tampa area and a fourth in the Orlando area, leaving Democrats with perhaps only four of the state’s 28 congressional seats. There are currently seven Florida Democrats in Congress; an eighth, former Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, resigned last week after being charged with embezzlement.

Florida, which does not hold primary elections until August, is the last state aiming to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. A Supreme Court decision expected soon on a key provision of the Voting Rights Act could provide opportunities for other states to do so, but with many holding primaries in the next month or two, time is running out.

Mr. DeSantis’s map, initially made public without detailed county borders or other critical information, was first reported by Fox News, which received the map before the State Legislature did Monday morning. Lawmakers are scheduled to meet in a special redistricting session starting Tuesday, which means they have less than 24 hours to examine the proposal before they convene.

The short turnaround is likely to upset some state lawmakers, few of whom have expressed much interest in redistricting, as well as many members of the Florida congressional delegation, who will have to introduce themselves to new voters between now and the midterms. State lawmakers are not expected to propose any maps of their own, but rather to vote on Mr. DeSantis’s redraw as early as Wednesday. It is almost certain to pass, given the Republican supermajorities in the State House and Senate.

Should the map pass, it could give Republicans nationwide an edge of roughly two to four seats heading into the midterms. That would hardly be the multiseat advantage that President Trump and national Republicans envisioned when they kicked off the national redistricting battle in Texas last summer.

But should the fight for the U.S. House come down to a few districts, any seat that flips from Democrat to Republican could prove critical. Republicans currently control the chamber by just a handful of seats.

Any redistricting effort in Florida faces a significant legal hurdle. In 2010, voters in Florida passed the Fair Districts amendments, which effectively ban partisan gerrymandering in the state. Mr. DeSantis told Fox News that his proposed map — colored red and blue to indicate the expected political leanings of new districts — “more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today.”

Here is the current party registration in Florida, according to Florida government data:

Current proportions (≈ February–March 2026)

  • Republican: ~41%
  • Democrat: ~30%
  • No Party / Independent (plus minor parties): ~29%  

But DeSantis’ gerrymander awards 85% of Congressional seats to Republicans.

Categories Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Florida, Politics, Trump

GOP Reacts to Saturday Night Chaos with Demand to “Build the Golden Ballroom!”

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
4

The Meidas Network summarized the events post-Saturday night.

Politico pointed out that Republicans have taken to social media to blame Democrats for “divisive rhetoric that fuels violence. So stop calling Stephen Miller a fascist, stop calling ICE “Brown Shirts” or the Gestapo, stop calling out Trump’s authoritarianism. .

And they all agree that Trump’s armored golden ballroom must be built, even though future White House Correspondents dinners would never be held in that ballroom.

Meidas writes:

Trump’s has been oddly quiet…and the MAGA machine is doing the work for him

Let’s start with the silence. Donald Trump’s approval rating is sitting at 33%. His approval on the economy is 30% — worse than Nixon’s numbers at the time Nixon resigned. And oddly enough, Trump this morning has essentially vanished from his own social media feed. His last post was about renaming ICE to “NICE” — National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — so the media would have to say “NICE agents” all day. A random account called @alyssamariiee11 floated the idea, so naturally, Trump ran with it.

Meanwhile, the White House Correspondents Dinner incident, where a lone individual breached a security perimeter before being stopped, has become the latest Trump regime talking point factory. Rather than address inflation, the economic freefall, or the catastrophic war in Iran, the entire MAGA congressional caucus has been deployed with one singular mission: demand Dear Leader a ballroom.

The Ballroom Brigade

I want you to understand what’s happening here. While Americans are struggling to pay rent, while we are in a jobs recession, while this administration loots the public treasury for its right-wing billionaire benefactors — the Republican Party is spending its media time in a coordinated push for a White House ballroom. This is not a coincidence. This is the talking point. They all have it.

Rep. Pat Fallon says a ballroom is something they can “completely control.” Rep. Michael Rulli says “we gotta build that ballroom as soon as possible.” Rep. Mike Lawler calls it “imperative.” Speaker Mike Johnson says it’ll have seven-inch-thick glass and be “a very safe environment.” Rep. Warren Davidson, perhaps the most unhinged of the bunch, calls the entire situation a “flex” directed at Iran…that gathering every top official in American government in a non-secured hotel was some kind of geo-strategic message rather than a security failure.

And then there’s Rick Scott, who told the cameras that Democrats “want President Trump, Republicans murdered all across this country, capitalists murdered.” That is a sitting United States senator. On television.

Rep. Scott Perry added that the whole incident stems from Democrats calling Trump a threat to democracy and comparing people around him to Nazis. Tom Emmer wanted everyone to know that despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s hearing “positive feedback” from somewhere about Trump’s Iran war. And Kash Patel, who should be spending his time running the FBI, not doing cable hits, told the world this was something “the movies don’t even write about.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan’s response to all of it: “I think I’m gonna have an aneurysm.” Honestly, Mehdi, same.

One social media user put it simply: the GOP’s ability to completely hijack news cycles with this kind of nonsense, while gas prices surge and corruption runs unchecked, is infuriating. And they’re right. That is the strategy. Create a noise machine loud enough that you don’t have to answer for anything real.

The ballroom doesn’t even having anything to do with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, because the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an event held by the private organization the White House Correspondents’ Association, not the White House. The entire narrative is a complete non sequitur. But that doesn’t stop the MAGA drones from repeating it ad nauseam like shoddy computer software that just got a new update.

Oh, Melania…

In Trump’s absence, Melania stepped up this morning with a social media post attacking Jimmy Kimmel, calling his monologue about their family “hateful and violent rhetoric” and demanding ABC take action. She called Kimmel a coward who “hides behind ABC.”

MeidasTouch’s Adam Mockler reminder her of a recent post made by her husband following the death of Robert Mueller: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

“[T]his your husband?” replied Mockler.

As Mockler went on to write, “MAGA authoritarianism is pretending the president is ‘joking’ when he makes death threats, but comedians are somehow ‘shaping public policy’ when they make jokes.”

By the way, Sunday was Melania’s birthday — and if you noticed, Donald didn’t publicly post a happy birthday message.

Who did wish Melania a happy birthday? Paolo Zampolli — the man who introduced her to Trump back in 1998 and who once reportedly explored starting a modeling agency with Jeffrey Epstein. Zampolli, currently serving as a U.S. ambassador for cultural affairs in this administration, posted a birthday tribute featuring an AI-generated Mount Rushmore with Melania’s face replacing all four presidents. It was weird.

Germany calls out Trump’s Iran “humiliation”

Now to what actually matters internationally. While Trump’s congressional supporters spend their day lobbying for granite and bulletproof glass, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — speaking publicly today — delivered one of the most direct indictments of Trump’s foreign policy failures I’ve seen from a Western ally.

Merz said the United States has “absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever” in its conflict with Iran. He said this entire situation is, at minimum, “ill-considered,” and directly compared it to the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq — 20-year quagmires that the U.S. stumbled into and couldn’t exit. He pointed out that the Iranians are either negotiating brilliantly or refusing to negotiate brilliantly, and either way, they’re winning. He noted that making American officials travel to Islamabad only to leave empty-handed is the humiliation of a nation.

Merz didn’t stop there. He said Europe has offered to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end, and offered to deploy German minesweepers to clear mines from the strait. But first, he said, the fighting has to stop — and he doesn’t see how that happens any time soon given that Iran is “proving to be much stronger than initially thought” and the Americans have no convincing path to a negotiated exit.

This is the chancellor of one of America’s closest allies, speaking at a school, saying publicly that the United States is being humiliated. And he’s right.

Iran and Russia Meet

Making matters considerably worse, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi is currently in Moscow, where he met with Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin as part of a pre-planned three-country visit that also included Oman and Pakistan. What Araghchi said while there should be front-page news everywhere.

He declared that Iran and Russia are “strategic partners,” that Russia has “always supported” Iran, and that their cooperation will continue. He added that the world has now seen “Iran’s true power in confronting America,” and declared the Islamic Republic a “stable, steadfast, and powerful system.”

Putin, for his part, praised the Iranian people for “fighting with courage and valor” and said Moscow will do everything in its power to help Iran through this period.

This is happening while Trump invites Russia to the G20. While Trump sucks up to Putin in Alaska. While Trump bombs Iran. All three of these things are happening simultaneously. The so-called strategy, if you can call it that, is collapsing in real time.

Katie Phang sues the DOJ over Epstein Files

Finally, important news from within the MeidasTouch family. Our host and legal analyst Katie Phang has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump DOJ, accusing it of brazen violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The suit alleges the DOJ missed statutory deadlines, over-redacted documents — including materials referencing Donald Trump — and withheld key records from the public. Katie is asking the court to order full disclosure, strike the unlawful redactions, and appoint a special master to oversee compliance.

Scott MacFarlane Reports

Journalist Katie Phang Files Suit Against Justice Department Over Epstein Files Release

A former Justice Department prosecutor has filed a federal civil lawsuit, on behalf of journalist Katie Phang, against the Trump Administration, alleging the Administration is violating federal law by withhold and redacting documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files.

This is what independent journalism looks like in 2026. You don’t just report on the corruption, you fight it in court. I’m proud to have Katie on this network. Subscribe to her YouTube channel and follow this lawsuit closely.

More to come. Stay focused, and subscribe to the MeidasTouch podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Categories Accountability, Republicans, Trump

Jan Resseger: Linda McMahon Decides Which Federal Programs Live or Die, Not Congress

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger, the most reliable analyst of federal programs, reports on the Trump administration’s decisions to increase or decrease or eliminate federal programs at will–regardless of Congressuonal direction.

By the way, be sure to read The New Yorker‘s fascinating dissection of the career path of wrestling entrepreneur and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Wrestling prepared her for politics, says writer Zach Helfand.

A brief excerpt:

Eventually, Linda McMahon came to be “tombstoned” (held upside down and slammed on her head) by a wrestler named Kane, “stunnered” (put in a three-quarter facelock jawbreaker) by Stone Cold Steve Austin, sexually assaulted, cheated on, driven to seek a divorce, lusted over, and sedated. Vince tried to get Shane to slap her in a scene, but Shane [her son] refused. Stephanie [her daughter] slapped her, though, and she slapped Stephanie. McMahon’s most memorable story arc involved Vince demanding a divorce, triggering a nervous breakdown in the ring which rendered her catatonic. For months, Vince would roll out her limp body in a wheelchair and subject her to various humiliations. The wrestler Trish Stratus, who was kissed and groped by Vince in a scene in front of a vegetative McMahon, has recalled that during rehearsal Linda asked, “If I drool, would that be more effective for my character?”

Before the election, I foolishly predicted that Trump would never get rid of the Department of Education because many Republicans support it. I did not anticipate that Trump would appoint a Secretary willing to hollow it out by transferring most of its programs to other departments.

Resseger follows up by showing how McMahon has cut and rearranged the budget:

If you have been tracking what is happening to federal funding for the nation’s public schools, you won’t be surprised to learn that Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman continues his role as the best reporter on this subject.  Here are two updates from last week.

How will federal funding flow this year once most of the Department of Education’s programs have been sent to other federal departments through interagency agreements?

Lieberman reassures state education officials and school district leaders that most key programs will continue to have their funds released “through the U.S. Department of Education’s grant portal this summer… Programs like Title I aid for disadvantaged students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)… allocate funds for school districts, but by law the money flows first to states in two batches, one on July 1 and another three months later… In a statement, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency is ‘committed to delivering formula funding by the July 1 deadline.”

Operation of Title I is traveling to the Department of Labor, and the work IDEA is traveling to the Department of Health and Human Services.  Lieberman describes what is expected to happen with Title I: “The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration in recent months has advertised new education grant competitions ‘on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education,’ and the two agencies have touted their collaboration in jointly running the competitions.  Still, most staffers overseeing those programs still work for the Department of Education. The postings announcing grant availability list Education department email addresses under the section with contact information.”

To what extent did the Trump Administration Violate the Congressional power of the purse last year?

Lieberman reports that data recently released by the Department of Education shows that under Linda McMahon’s leadership, the Department of Education “sidestepped Congress on more than $1 billion in education spending.”

“The Education Department, under President Donald Trump, subsequently subtracted appropriated funding from more than a dozen programs and instead added those dollars to other priorities, according to an Education Week analysis of congressional justification documents the White House published this month as part of its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal… The Education Department typically publishes its ‘spending plan’ mere weeks after Congress passes a new fiscal year budget, confirming allocations lawmakers laid out in their budget bills.  Congress approved fiscal 2025 spending (last year’s final federal budget) in March of last year, but the Education Department’s spending plan never materialized. That means the recently published numbers offer the first glimpse at how the executive branch decided to spend funds Congress appropriated more than a year ago.”

Here are merely some of Lieberman’s examples of what the new numbers show.  “For four Education Department programs, the Trump administration spent more than what Congress had prescribed: charter schools ($60 million added), civics instruction ($140 million added), historically Black colleges and universities ($439 million added), and tribal colleges ($56 million added).  To come up with those added expenditures, the Trump administration effectively zeroed out another four programs entirely, rerouting a total of $463 million for teacher preparation, public television, university foreign-language studies programs, and Hispanic-serving higher education institutions.  For another eight programs, the executive branch underspent the allocation Congress approved. That included redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars for minority-serving institutions within a higher education grant program—Aid for Institutional Development—that the Trump administration has argued violates the Constitution.”

Lieberman explains where McMahon’s department found $60 million to add to charter school spending: “To bolster the Charter Schools program, the agency depleted the entire $31 million allocation for the Ready to Learn grant program, which supports the development of educational TV programming for young children. The remaining $29 million boot for charter schools came from portions of fiscal 2025 allocations for four other programs: Magnet Schools ($14 million), Javits Gifted and Talented ($9 million),  Statewide Family Engagement Centers ($3 million), and Assistance in Arts Education ($3 million). The Trump administration last year slashed ongoing grants for each of those four programs as well as dozens of others, arguing in many cases that individual grantees were engaged in diversity-related initiatives that contradicted the president’s priories. But for most of those changes, the department offered no public announcement, instead notifying individual grant recipients with little warning that their awards had been discontinued.”

Perhaps there will be less cutting or rearranging of Congressionally allocated education dollars in the coming year: “Lawmakers included language in the fiscal 2026 budget law they approved in February that much more explicitly restricts movement of money from one program to another. The Department has already begun soliciting new grant applications for programs it moved to disrupt or shutter last year… Lieberman reports that the ranking members of the Senate and House appropriations committees, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) “said they prioritized unambiguous guardrails in the fiscal 2026 budget to block the Trump administration from further reprogramming funds.”

Lieberman adds, however, that Office  of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought has threatened to use “pocket rescissions,’ in which the executive branch proposes to rescind appropriated funds so late in the fiscal year that the money expires whether Congress approves the changes or not. In other words, this year, Congress could allow Congressionally appropriated dollars expire.

Lieberman quotes Sarah Abernathy, who served for a decade as executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a federal budget advocacy group: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an administration say, ‘We have tons of authority to make our own decisions about funding levels for programs.’ “

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Extremism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

FBI Raids Home of Former Capitol Police Officer, Based on Tip from Rightwing Website

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2026 //
6

This is one of those stories that is hard to believe. But it happened. Experienced FBI agents were purged by the hapless Kash Patel, after Trump put him in charge. This story demonstrates the Patel-ized FBI, which chases crazy rumors but can’t find Savannah Guthrie’s mother.

Will Sommer wrote in The Bulwark:

WHEN THE CONSERVATIVE WEBSITE the Blaze published an article last November accusing a former Capitol Police officer of being the January 6th pipe bomber based on “gait analysis,” most of the public reacted skeptically.

But not the FBI.

Instead, the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency allegedly acted on the information the Blaze had gathered and sent bomb-sniffing dogs, agents in tactical gear, and even a helicopter to that former Capitol Police officer’s home. It was dramatic, terrifying, and wildly unnecessary.

That’s according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the former officer, Shauni Kerkhoff—who had defended Congress from the January 6th rioters and later testified in court against some of them.

Kerkhoff’s lawsuit provides startling new allegations about the government’s frantic and largely futile efforts to try to close a case that had generated a wave of wild speculation on the right and befuddled the leadership of the FBI under Director Kash Patel. It also underscores the degree to which conspiracy theories have influenced official government action, even at the highest levels.

The drama actually began shortly before the Blaze published its now-infamous and since-retracted “gait analysis” article. According to Kerkhoff’s lawsuit, the reporter behind the story, Steve Baker, shared his allegations with staffers for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. His findings were based on supposed similarities between Kerkhoff’s style of walking and the bomber’s. Gabbard’s office subsequently drafted a memo identifying Kerkhoff as a possible suspect, CBS News reported.

On November 6, 2025, two days prior to the publication of the story—though one day after Baker had begun publicly teasing his findings on a podcast with the Blaze’s founder, Glenn Beck—Kerkhoff, who had left her job to work in security at the CIA, alleges that she was called in to an office at her job to meet with two FBI agents saying they were interested in “online chatter” about her role in the attempted bombings. Kerkhoff claims in her lawsuit that she was then put on administrative leave from the CIA and asked by the FBI agents to give permission for a few of them to enter the house she shared with her boyfriend to look for a pair of shoes worn by the bomber.

Kerkhoff claims she and boyfriend did not give permission to the agents, but agreed to meet them at the home.

Soon after Kerkhoff arrived at the house, she claims, a “caravan of FBI vehicles descended on their street.” The group included a bomb-disposal truck and an FBI helicopter flying overhead, as well as agents in “full tactical gear” with their guns drawn. Kerkhoff alleges the agents “swept through the house” with bomb-sniffing dogs, “rifled through drawers” and tossed the couple’s belongings on the floor.

Screenshot of a passage from the lawsuit.

“It suddenly occurred to Ms. Kerkhoff that they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes,” the lawsuit reads.

At one point, Kerkhoff claims, she asked a “senior FBI official” on the scene why “online chatter” had prompted the raid. The official, according to her lawsuit, said he was responding to orders from “higher up.”

A spokesperson for the FBI responded that the agency wouldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

The hours-long search ended at 8 p.m., according to Kerkhoff’s lawsuit. But the ordeal wasn’t over yet. She claims she was then subjected to an hours-long polygraph test at an FBI office, leaving only in the early hours of November 7. A day later, the Blaze formally published its allegations that she was the bomber, prompting Kerkhoff and her boyfriend to hide in their home for fear of their lives, according to the lawsuit.

Baker’s article was promoted by Republicans members of Congress, and prompted Beck to declare it “the biggest scandal” in a century. Yet it quickly fell apart under scrutiny, and was retracted after the FBI arrested suspect Brian Cole Jr. for the attempted bombing in December. Cole has since confessed to planting the bombs, which did not detonate on the day of the riot. His legal team has since tried to argue for his innocence by noting, among other things, that Baker has not backed off his original reporting.

But the Blaze has backed off, even to the point of firing Baker earlier this month. And while he was set to make a podcast appearance with Megyn Kelly, that too was apparently canceled amid fears of defamation suits. Baker, himself a January 6th defendant, told me that Blaze management is “in the fetal position” over the prospect of Kerkhoff’s lawsuit, saying the potentially massive judgment would amount to an “existential threat” to the site.

Kerkhoff returned to her job at the CIA a few weeks later, after establishing an alibi by showing prosecutors video of her playing with her dog at the time of the attempted bombings, according to the lawsuit.

She is now suing the Blaze and its former reporters for six counts of defamation, saying she suffered “reputational harm” and “emotional distress” over the article and related podcast appearances. Kerkhoff doesn’t specify how much money she’s suing for, asking instead for “actual damages in amounts to be proven at trial.” Kerkhoff is represented by heavyweight defamation firm Clare Locke.

What will Kerkhoff win at a trial for defamation and damages? It should be enough to deter others from making wild accusations without evidence.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Trump, Stupid, Extremism
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