Our Allies Speak Up in Support of Ukraine

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2025 //
23

Trump’s MAGA base was happy with his beatdown of Zelensky, and Russia too was thrilled. His Cabinet members each dutifully thanked him for offending Zelensky and “putting America First.” ((I doubt they realized that the “America First” crowd in the 1930s was opposed to helping Europe fight Hitler.)

With the exception of the Fascist leader of Hungary, who consolidated power by undermining the press and the judiciary and demonizing LGBT people, our allies cheered on Zelensky.

One hopes that Europe will unify to protect their border from Putin. Maybe the U.S. will be ejected from NATO.

The New York Times reported:

European leaders quickly pledged their continued support for Ukraine on Friday after President Trump’s blistering criticism of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting at the White House.

Leaders lined up behind Ukraine and praised its embattled president, the statements coming one after the other: from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Ireland. Canadian, Australian and New Zealand leaders added their voices to the Europeans’.

Even as Western leaders generally shied away from explicitly criticizing Mr. Trump, who had told Mr. Zelensky he was “not in a good position” and angrily threatened to pull American support for Ukraine unless he agreed to a cease-fire deal with Russia, many in Europe addressed their statements of encouragement directly to Mr. Zelensky.

“Your dignity honors the bravery of the Ukrainian people,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on social media, referring to Mr. Zelensky. “Be strong, be brave, be fearless. You are never alone, dear President.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had put on a display of friendship with Mr. Trump during a chummy visit to the White House on Monday, said the United States and Europe had been justified in aiding Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

In a statement, Mr. Macron urged America to remain on the side of the Ukrainians, who he said were “fighting for their dignity, their independence, their children, and the security of Europe.”

Friedrich Merz, who is on track to become Germany’s next chancellor after the country’s election this week, said in a statement addressed to “Dear Volodymyr” that his country would stand behind Ukraine “in good and in testing times.”

“We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war,” Mr. Merz added, apparently referring to Mr. Trump, who has called Mr. Zelensky a dictator and blamed him for the invasion. The departing German leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said that Ukraine could rely on Germany and the rest of Europe.

Daniel Fried, a career diplomat under American presidents of both parties who had just returned from a trip to Brussels, said the Oval Office clash had jolted Europe’s capitals, generated a wave of sympathy for Mr. Zelensky and upended a peace process that appeared to be gaining traction.

“The Europeans are horrified and dismayed,” Mr. Fried said, adding that Europeans see the United States shifting to a great-power strategy in which large countries carve up the world. “They’re watching the America they know and respect change in a matter of a couple of weeks.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, a center-left leader who carefully avoided any major disagreements with Mr. Trump during a visit to the White House on Thursday, spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky on Friday, according to the prime minister’s office. Mr. Starmer “retains his unwavering support for Ukraine and is playing his part to find a path forward to a lasting peace,” the office said in a statement.

Mr. Starmer is scheduled to host in London an international meeting on Ukraine on Sunday with Mr. Zelensky and other leaders from across Europe.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, a right-wing nationalist who has long been at odds with much of Europe, appeared to side with Mr. Trump, saying on social media, “Strong men make peace, weak men make war.” He did not mention Ukraine or Mr. Zelensky in his post.

Mr. Trump’s upbraiding of Mr. Zelensky also predictably won praise in Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Telegram that Mr. Trump had told “the truth.”

The Canadian foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, joined the European leaders in offering words of support for Ukraine, telling reporters that Ukrainians were “fighting for their own freedoms, but also fighting for ours.”

Ms. Joly, whose country’s relationship with Mr. Trump has been deeply strained by the American president’s threats to annex Canada and plans to impose tariffs, stressed the importance of maintaining Western unity over the war in Ukraine. She said that the Russians were watching.

On Saturday morning in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese echoed the messages of support from Europe. Mr. Albanese said his country was proud to help Ukraine defend itself against “the brutality of Russian aggression.”

Mr. Zelensky responded to each European leader on social media, writing, “Thank you for your support.”

But he offered his most ample statement of gratitude to Mr. Trump, who had said in the Oval Office earlier on Friday that Mr. Zelensky was not “acting at all thankful” for American aid.

“Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit,” wrote Mr. Zelensky, also thanking Mr. Trump, and adding, “Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.”

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, History, Republicans, Shame, Trump, Vance, J.D.

The Trump-Putin New World Order

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2025 //
18

James Pintell of The Boston Globe wrote yesterday, after the fractious meeting in the Oval Office in which Vance and Trump insulted Zelensky, as the beginning of a “new world order.”

He wrote:

The blow-up set the stage for an entirely new world order, should future presidents choose to accept its premise. Or they could, of course, go in a different direction.

Following World War II, the global order was clear. There were two major powers, two teams, and nearly every event was viewed through the lens of which side it benefited or which it cost.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the United States as the world’s sole superpower…

Then Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago.

The early international response to that war fell into three broad camps. At first, Russia was isolated, sanctioned by developed nations that also provided support to Ukraine. Eventually, Russia found allies: China gave it money, Iran gave it drones, and North Korea gave it troops. Meanwhile, much of the Global South remained neutral, sitting out the conflict altogether.

But the Oval Office meeting Friday may have formalized something that has been brewing since Trump’s reelection in November: a new era of neocolonialism, where a handful of powerful nations dictate global affairs.

Is this what Trump voters wanted?

Did Americans realize when they voted last November that they were voting to abandon NATO and our European allies? Did they realize that they were voting for an alliance with Putin and Russia? Did they know they were voting to abandon Ukraine in its fight to be free of Russian domination?

The two big issues were immigration (“out of control,” said Trump) and inflation (Trump said inflation would fall as soon as he was insulated.

I don’t recall any promises to create a new world order in which we voted with Russia, North Korea, and Iran against condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I don’t remember Trump promising to create chaos in every federal agency. Or pledging to stop all foreign aid. Or making Elon Musk the co-President.

Yet the meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump and Vance berated Zelensky clarified that the U.S. position in the world has changed.

We are now in Putin’s camp. we do not defend democracy, freedom, and Western values. We do not defend nations that are struggling against authoritarian regimes. If it were 1939, we would be allied with Hitler.

The meeting was a set-up. Zelensky undertook an arduous journey from his war-torn country, assuming that he was going to sign a deal to give the U.S. half of Ukraine’s natural resources, in exchange for our continued support. The deal was written.

But Trump wanted Zelensky to agree that Putin could keep all the Ukrainian land he had seized.

Zelensky wanted security assurances to guarantee that Putin would not invade Ukraine again.

The meeting began with Zelensky thanking Trump for inviting him to the White House. Almost immediately, Vance attacked Zelensky for not showing sufficient gratitude. Note that as a Senator from Ohio, Vance voted against every aid to Ukraine bill.

Vance and Trump insulted Zelensky repeatedly. Zelensky didn’t show enough respect to Trump, Zelensky was not sufficiently grateful.

Zelensky left or was thrown out, I’m not sure which.

Trump immediately crowed about his strength and power.

Every single cabinet member tweeted how proud they were of Trump for “putting America first.” So did MAGA members of Congress.

Dimitri Medvedev, the Prime Mjnister of Russia, tweeted that he was pleased that “the insolent pig” (Zelensky) was ousted from the White House.

This is not the country I grew up in. This is not the country to which I recited the Pledge of Allegiance every school day.

All of those wonderful songs I sang about liberty, freedom, justice, equality. All the stories about standing up against tyranny so that people could live in freedom. All dashed.

We must have the courage, the strength, the fortitude to recover our country, its values, its ideals.

Friends with a murderous tyrant? This is not who we are. Or were.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, International

Dan Rather: Trump and Vance Disgraced Our Country

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2025 //
6

Veteran newsman Dan Rather described his reaction to the fiasco in the Oval Office, when Trump and Vance berated our ally, Volodymyr Zelensky, while praising Vladimir Putin.

You must watch the video of the encounter, which is linked at the end. I cringed as I watched. Trump and Vance bullied Zelensky. They pounded him with attacks and questions but never let him respond.

When you watch it, you see that they came into the meeting intending to humiliate Zelensky.

Trump even talked about how Putin had suffered alongside him because of the allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. A bipartisan Senate committee, led by Republicans, concluded that Putin did interfere in that election, specifically to help Trump.

Here is Dan Rather:

We try not to react to every White House event involving the new president, as we like to take a little time to digest what has happened and provide thoughtful analysis. But there’s not much to analyze about the president’s shocking behavior on Friday.

It was a new low for American diplomacy in my lifetime. There are few words that are family-friendly enough to describe what happened. Embarrassing. Horrifying. Mortifying.

People who witnessed or have watched Trump and JD Vance’s behavior toward a visiting head of state have said it made them everything from appalled to nauseous.

Here’s what happened: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheduled to meet with Trump and Vance at the White House before a joint news conference and then a signing ceremony for a minerals-for-money deal. It never got past a one-sided shouting match in the Oval Office.

In what looked like a rehearsed and choreographed tag-team effort, Trump berated and lectured Zelenskyy while Vance egged him on. In front of cameras, Trump harangued Zelenskyy for supposedly not being grateful for U.S. aid and not acceding to American demands to end the war.

According to CNN’s fact checkers, Zelenskyy has thanked presidents Biden and Trump, and the American people, 33 times since the war began three years ago.

The whole thing today appeared to be a setup, a trap sprung on a wounded ally. Whatever it was, it will remain, through history, a stain on America’s reputation.

This reporter has covered hundreds of photo opportunities in the Oval Office over many administrations. Such are almost always dignified occasions. Today this tradition was sullied for the benefit of the MAGA faithful and the Kremlin.

Peter Baker of The New York Times described the meeting in shocked terms. “I have covered the White House since 1996. There has never been an Oval Office meeting in front of cameras like this one in all that time. Never has an American president lectured the leader of an ally in public like this, much less a leader that is fighting off invaders.”

If the point was for Trump’s friends in Russia to see his performance, message received. Cheers erupted in Moscow. A former Russian president praised Trump for his treatment of Zelenskyy.

At one point, Trump openly threatened the Ukrainian president. “You’re either going to make a deal or you’re out,” Trump yelled. A short time later, Zelenskyy left the White House.

The absurdity of the moment concluded with Trump, a former reality TV actor, saying, “This is going to make great television.”

To think the world’s security rests on this man’s judgment.

Even if you’ve seen the exchange or pieces of it, you may want to watch it again. And ponder anew what kind of country we are becoming.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/v_kTNIYsFnQ?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Paul Cobaugh: Trump and Vance Are Traitors

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
18

Paul Cobaugh spent his career in the military, where he worked in intelligence. In his blog “Truth against Threats,” he expressed his horror and shame about what Trump and Vance did today to betray our country. For another view, consider Senator Lindsey Graham’s craven response; he called on Zelensky to resign, in a tweet. Loyalty above country; loyalty above democracy.

He wrote:

I’m still catching my breath after a long road trip, but wanted to share my most succinct thoughts about the White House, Trump fiasco today, with President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine. 

This is somber and I would ask, that you please consider the heartfelt nature of the following words. No cartoons, no graphics. This is simply, a plea, from the innermost part of my heart. 

My friends and family,

My heart could hardly be heavier, from a professional perspective. What I am about to say, has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s political party affiliation. It is simply a matter of being an American, loyal to my nation, its founding principles and our esteemed history, as a bastion of democracy and morality. Yes, it is true that we have erred, often in our history, but always as MLK said, and I paraphrase, “moved the arc of history, towards justice.” 

The fiasco today in the White House, represented a treasonous sellout of American values and our own national security. Please, hear what I am saying. The vicious and utterly dishonest attack on President Zelenskiy, by President Trump and VP Vance, with support from others, was the single most disgraceful act I have witnessed in my lifetime. That says something since I have lived through President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment. 

President Zelenskiy of Ukraine has been doggedly leading his nation in their desperate defense, against a genocidal Putin for the last three years. Ukraine’s fight has always been our fight. They have been ours and NATO’s first line of defense against the world’s most dangerous adversary, Vladimir Putin. Putin, interfered in our 2016, 2020 and 2024 election, in cooperation with the Trump campaign. The evidence, in and outside of classified channels, is overwhelming. 

Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine has been an exercise, in cultural and actual genocide, against the Ukrainian people. Stalin via the Holodomor or starvation of Ukrainians in the 1930s, was the first attempt at erasing Ukrainian culture from history. Putin, in his pathetic attempt to regain the territory of the former Soviet state, is doing the same. Putin is under sanctions by the International Criminal Court for genocide. The Ukrainian people, have suffered what no American could possibly understand and yet, they fight for not only their freedom, but their very lives and culture. 

Our current president and his entire administration supports Putin. There is no argument to support the opposite and I would respectfully challenge anyone, to argue these points. 

My friends and family, the massacre of men, women and children, along with the attempt to erase the very culture of Ukraine, is everything that our nation has long fought against, honorably. It is as simple as, this is what it means to be an American citizen. Democracy is our creed and the lifeblood of our nation. We cannot allow our nation to be submissive to the hopes and desires of genocidal despots, like Vladimir Putin. Still, POTUS Trump, has long admired and has attempted to emulate him. I cannot in any sense, stay quiet, without selling out my own morality. 

Americans defend freedom. That is who we are. We do not praise, endorse or support tyranny. Maybe President Trump does and his entire cabinet and party, but those of us who have demonstrated our values on the battlefield, can never allow ourselves to condone and assist such tyranny. The events today in the White House, did in fact endorse genocide, tyranny and every value abhorrent, to our nation’s values and history. 

President Trump, his sycophantic party and his entire cabinet, should feel absolutely nothing but shame this evening. Any moral American, would resign immediately. No one in this administration will do so. 

Many will argue that what occurred was fine with them, from a party perspective. My friends, our values transcend political parties. Americans do not do, what our president and VP did today, with the full support of the cabinet and party. 

I never endorse a party as that I do not believe in them. I will though, strongly and with every fiber of my moral spine, condemn this administration as un-American and a threat to US and global security. I ask all true patriots, to make your feelings clear to your elected congressmen and senators, that you will not stand for treason. 

I have employed the most reasonable language that I am capable of, to bring you this message. I emplore everyone, to revisit our constitution and demand that your representatives and senators, do so as well. I and others in my profession that have worked at the highest levels, predicted today, as far back as 2015. No one would listen then and in the interim. Please, consider my words now, before there is nothing left of what it means to be an American. 

My kindest regards to everyone,

Paul

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

PBS: Brooks and Capehart on the White House Debacle

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
7

David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart converse every Friday night on the PBS Newshour about the big story of the week. In these exchanges, Brooks is the conservative, Capehart is the liberal. Tonight’s story, of course, was the Trump-Vance attack on Zelensky and the apparent preference of these two American leaders for Putin over our allies.

Here is part of tonight’s transcript:

  • Amna Nawaz:From visits with heads of states to further restrictions on the press corps, we now turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.Great to see you both.
  • Jonathan Capehart:Hey, Amna.
  • Amna Nawaz:So you were both watching, of course, everything at the White House today in the meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy. We have talked about it a lot today, but I do want to play for you a little bit of the interview we know President Zelenskyy gave soon after that meeting.He sat down with FOX News and Bret Baier, and Baier asked him if Zelenskyy thought that the public spat there served Ukraine in any way. Here’s what Zelenskyy said.
  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President:I mean, this is not good for both sides anyway. And I will — I will — very open, but I can’t change our Ukrainian attitude to Russian. And I don’t want — they are killers, for us.This is very, very clear that Americans are the best of our friends. Europeans are the best of our friends. And Putin, with Russian, they are enemies. And it doesn’t mean that we don’t want peace. We just want to recognize the reality.
  • Amna Nawaz:Jonathan, what did you think when you were watching this unfold in the White House and what do you make of the way Zelenskyy is talking about it now?
  • Jonathan Capehart:I thought the low point for America on the world stage was the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki in 2017, when the president of the United States sided with the president of Russia against his own national intelligence apparatus.What we saw in the Oval Office was a travesty, horrendous, despicable. I — there aren’t any words to describe what we watched, where we saw a vice president who’s never been to Ukraine lecture a wartime president who was clearly summoned to the White House to humiliate him on the world stage either on behalf of or for the benefit of Vladimir Putin in Russia.And, look, I give President Zelenskyy major points for standing up for himself, for standing up for his nation and standing up for his people. He is in there fighting for America’s backing, which, I’m sorry, it should not even be in doubt, given the stakes that are involved and who he is trying to protect his people from.
  • Amna Nawaz:David, from that Helsinki meeting in 2018 to this meeting today, what do you make of it?
  • David Brooks:I will stick with today.(Laughter)
  • David Brooks:I have enough to say about today.I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea of about America, that we’re a flawed country, but we’re fundamentally a force for good in the world, that we defeated Soviet Union, we defeated fascism, we did the Marshall Plan, we did PEPFAR to help people live in Africa. And we make mistakes, Iraq, Vietnam, but they’re usually mistakes out of stupidity, naivete and arrogance.They’re not because we’re ill-intentioned. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe. And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen.Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office.And I have — I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.
  • Amna Nawaz:You heard Congressman Lawler, who would not criticize the president necessarily, but is a Ukraine supporter, say, we’re further away from a deal, they have to get back to a deal, the war has to end.You also heard Nick Schifrin report earlier, his European sources are saying there’s a fundamental transatlantic break now. Is this the realignment, Jonathan? Has this happened? The U.S. is now closer to Russia than to its European allies?
  • Jonathan Capehart:Undisputed. Yes. Yes.And the fact that the Europeans are already looking at it as a break, I think they have to do that. They can’t depend on the United States now. After what happened to President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, what happens to the Baltic states, what happens to Estonia if Russia rolls over the border? What happens to Poland if Russia rolls over the border?What happens if any of the NATO countries are attacked by Russia after what we just saw? They cannot depend on the United States anymore, after more than seven decades. I’m sure the Europeans are probably even more in shock than we are at this table.And I’m glad you used the word gangster, because that was the thing. When the — when President Trump got into it with President Zelenskyy, you don’t have any cards. Without us, you have no deal.It — that was gangster rule there. And between him and the vice president, it also felt like watching a wrestling match, where Vance jumps in the ring and then taps in the president, and then they gang up on a man who is literally fighting for the survival of his country.
Categories Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Trump Rages Against Zelensky in White House Meeting, Ends Talks with No Deal, Blames Zelensky

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
54

Today, Trump met at the White House with President Zelensky of Ukraine to try to hammer out a ceasefire and peace deal. Trump has demanded 50% of all of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to pay for America’s past support. The agreement was prepared for signing, but the meeting collapsed because Trump said Zelensky was “disrespectful.”

This request for “payment” is a curious demand. After World War 2, the U.S. did not ask our European allies to pay us for helping them. Instead, we created the Marshall Plan and sent them billions of dollars to rebuild their societies. They recovered and became our staunchest allies, until Trump, who seems determined to ally us with Russia and break with Europe.

The White House meeting went badly. Both Trump and Vance berated Zelensky. Trump became outraged at Zelensky for his lack of gratitude. Trump repeated the lie that Ukraine started the war.

Before any deal was reached, Trump denounced Zelensky and said Zelensky wasn’t ready to make a deal. Zelensky left the White House. Apparently, he wasn’t willing to accept Trump’s insistence that Ukraine started the war or that Ukraine should give Putin whatever he wanted, while signing away half of Ukraine’s natural resources without any future security guarantees against another Russian invasion.

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times posted:

This is the angriest I’ve seen Trump publicly in a long time. Trump is angry that he isn’t getting thanked and is being challenged.

Trump is bellowing as loudly as he ever does in public.

“You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position,” Trump says, again suggesting Russia’s invasion is Ukraine’s fault. Vance demands to know whether Zelensky has said “thank you” once, noting that Zelensky campaigned in Pennsylvania for Kamala Harris.

Zelensky was hoping for a moment with Trump that could be seen as some form of support from the United States. Instead, it became a two-on-one fight because Zelensky didn’t agree with Trump’s view.

Peter Baker of the New York Times posted:

Never has an American president lectured the leader of an ally in public like this, much less the leader of a country that is fighting off invaders.

I have covered the White House since 1996. There has never been an Oval Office meeting in front of cameras like this in all that time.

With raised voices, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in a remarkably fractious White House meeting, accusing Zelensky of not being grateful enough for U.S. support and trying to strong-arm him into making a peace deal with Russia

Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the news media, while Trump told the Ukrainian leader, “You’re not really in a good position right now.”

At one point, Trump said, “You either make a deal or we are out.”

The New York Times story about the public meeting was written by Peter Baker and summarized some of their notes:

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in a remarkably fractious White House meeting, accusing the leader of the besieged country of not being grateful enough for U.S. support and strong-arming him into making a peace deal with Russia.

With voices raised, Mr. Vance told Mr. Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the news media, while Mr. Trump told the Ukrainian leader, “You’re not really in a good position right now.” Mr. Trump added, “You’re gambling with World War III.” At one point, Mr. Trump said, “You either make a deal or we are out.”

The exchange in front of television cameras was one of the most dramatic moments ever to play out in public in the Oval Office and underscored the radical break between the United States and Ukraine since Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Trump has effectively sided with Russia while falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war and not giving in to his demands for how to end it.

Despite Mr. Trump’s claim last week, it was Russia that first attacked Ukraine in 2014 and then mounted a full-scale invasion in 2022. Although Ukrainian elections have been suspended for the past three years under martial law, Mr. Zelensky became president on the back of a landslide election victory in 2019. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, by contrast, is an actual dictator whose elections have been widely dismissed as frauds and who faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes.

Mr. Trump had seemed to be trying to put his rift with Mr. Zelensky to the side on Thursday before their meeting at the White House, brushing off a question about whether he still considers the Ukrainian leader a dictator.

“Did I say that?” Mr. Trump asked. “I can’t believe I said that. Next question.”

At a later news conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Mr. Trump did not respond to a question about whether he owed Mr. Zelensky an apology for calling him a dictator. “We’re going to have a very good meeting,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for him.”

His sharp language last week about Mr. Zelensky contrasted with his assessment of Mr. Putin, whom he has only praised since winning a second term. Just this week, the president called Mr. Putin “a very smart guy” and “a very cunning person.” He said that he believes that Mr. Putin really wants peace and added on Thursday that “he’ll keep his word” if a deal is reached, despite multiple Russian violations of agreements in the past.

While he has spoken with Mr. Putin by telephone, Mr. Trump has given little sense of how he expects to negotiate either a cease-fire or an enduring peace agreement. During last year’s campaign, he promised to end the war within 24 hours and to do so even before his inauguration, neither of which he actually did.

During Thursday’s news conference with Mr. Starmer, Mr. Trump expressed a mix of optimism and fatalism about his chances of making peace. “I think it’s going to happen, hopefully quickly,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all.”

Mr. Starmer and other European leaders have offered to contribute troops to a multinational peacekeeping force on the ground in Ukraine after the fighting halts. But Mr. Trump resisted pressure to commit U.S. forces to help, even without ground troops, or to offer security guarantees to Ukraine against renewed Russian aggression.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has demanded that Ukraine turn over some of its natural resources as payback for military aid provided under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to defend itself against Russia. While Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that the United States has contributed $350 billion and Europe only $100 billion, in fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe has allocated $138 billion compared with $119 billion from the United States.

Under a draft of the rare minerals agreement reviewed by The New York Times, Ukraine would contribute half of its revenues from the future monetization of natural resources, including critical minerals, oil and gas. Mr. Trump characterized the deal on Thursday as an economic development boon. “It’ll be good for both countries,” he said.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump

A New Partner in the Fight to Save Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
8

The Network for Public Education works with scores of state and local grassroots groups that want to protect and strengthen public schools. Almost 90% of out nation’s children attend public schools. We are fighting libertarian billionaires and religious zealots who want to dumb down and indoctrinate our children. Above all, they want to cut their taxes by undereducating our children.

We just added a new partner!

The Network for Public Education congratulates Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD), a new partner in our work to protect, defend, and improve public schools. Its comprehensive research exposes the harm charter schools do to Texas Public Schools and serves as a blueprint for reforming charter school laws not only in Texas but in every state.

OSOD will focus on fighting school privatization in Texas, with a special emphasis on the impact of charter schools. According to their website, “Texas public schools, governed by locally elected school board members, are the cornerstone of our democracy and the heart of our neighborhoods. However, since state lawmakers first authorized open-enrollment charter schools 30 years ago, unchecked charter expansion has harmed public school districts in every corner of the state.”

Along with the organizational launch is the launch of a comprehensive report: Facing Facts: Charter Schools in Texas. The report presents startling facts on the financial drain of charter schools on public schools, the lack of charter transparency, and the irresponsible practices presently enabled by Texas law. It provides readers with the arguments they need to actively advocate for charter reform.

Please visit their exciting new website here. 

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Resistance, Texas

ProPublica: Mike Johnson Shares Home with a Far-Right Pastor Who Has a Political Agenda

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
7

ProPublica reported that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson lives in the home of a far-right evangelical who lobbies for his extremist views.

How is this different from being roommates with a lobbyist for Big Pharma or the Tobacco Industry?

It’s not, but it may be more dangerous because this pastor is one of those wing nuts who knows nothing about the Founding Fsthers or the Constitutuion.

ProPublica reports:

In 2021, Steve Berger, an evangelical pastor who has attacked the separation of church and state as “a delusional lie” and called multinational institutions “demonic,” set off on an ambitious project. His stated goal: minister to members of Congress so that what “they learn is then translated into policy.” His base of operations would be a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Recently, the pastor scored a remarkable coup for a political influence project that has until now managed to avoid public scrutiny. He got a new roommate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been staying at the home since around the beginning of this year, according to interviews and videos obtained by ProPublica.

The house is owned by a major Republican donor and Tennessee car magnate who has joined Berger in advocating for and against multiple bills before Congress.

Over the past four years, Berger and his wife, Sarah Berger, have dedicated themselves to what they call their D.C. “ministry center.” In addition to Johnson, who is an evangelical conservative, the pastor has built close relationships with several other influential conservative politicians. Dan Bishop, now nominated for a powerful post in the Trump White House, seems to have also lived in the home last year while he was still a congressman, according to three people.

A spokesperson for Johnson said that the speaker “pays fair market value in monthly rent for the portion of the Washington, D.C. townhome that he occupies.” He did not answer a question about how much Johnson is paying. House ethics rules allow members of Congress to live anywhere, as long as they are paying fair-market rent.

The spokesperson added that Johnson “has never once spoken to Mr. Berger about any piece of legislation or any matter of public policy.” Berger and Bishop did not respond to requests for comment.

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Please read the rest of the article.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, History, Religion, Separation of church and state

Musk Takes a Chainsaw to the Federal Workforce and Creates Chaos

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
9

This article in Government Executive describes Elon Musk’s savage attack on the federal workforce as the “triple cleaver” approach. It is actually the chainsaw approach, the very implement Elon waved around on stage at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting. As he fires people without regard to their contributions, their experience, their worth, he celebrates and jumps around like a monkey on stage. Does he care about the lives he’s wrecking? Does he worry about the damage to the agencies he is decimating? Of course not! He’s our king!

Government Executive writes:

This president summarily fired tens of thousands of federal employees. This one cut more than 400,000 federal jobs, implementing a hiring freeze and dangling buyout offers to a vast swath of employees. This one opened thousands of government jobs to competition from the private sector. This one went so far as to issue an executive order requiring that all applicants for government jobs pass a loyalty test. 

Now, in just a few weeks on the job, President Trump—via Elon Musk and his team of federal raiders—has found a way to outdo all of them. (Them being, in order: Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush and Truman.) 

Musk and his squad at the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service—a name that even the most talented satirist couldn’t make up—have found a way to do what was once thought impossible, or illegal, or at least irrational: unload federal employees en masse. They have done so with a triple-meat-cleaver approach: a near-total hiring freeze, a buyout (sorry, “deferred resignation”) offer that may or may not be legal or affordable, and mass firings of workers without regard to their individual job performance or the importance of the work they do.

Most recent presidents have taken office having made promises to cut the fat out of the bureaucracy. But none have begun to do so in the absence of a rational plan, or even any consideration of the implications of what they were doing. That is, until now. 

Musk has gone so far as to declare the federal workforce “unconstitutional,” so it’s no surprise that he and his team are taking a “fire first and ask questions later” approach to workforce reductions. 

Their effort is radically different from the one taken by the previous Republican president: Trump himself. Back in 2017, federal management wonks were actually excited by a Trump initiative requiring agencies to develop restructuring plans aimed at reducing redundancy and improving efficiency in federal operations. Now that Trump has outsourced government reform to Musk and company, the emphasis is on simply slashing jobs, regardless of the consequences. The result is chaos.

Agencies have had to scramble to try to rehire employees in critical roles who were summarily fired. Other employees were let go after they accepted the deferred resignation offer, and are now left wondering if the promise of full pay through September still stands. 

Very few of the jobs Musk and Trump are eliminating are filled by poor performers, or disloyal deep-staters, or involve operations that have been identified as unnecessary. And the monetary savings involved are trivial. After all, you could eliminate the entire federal workforce, and the reduction in spending would barely register in the federal budget. 

As a percentage of American jobs, the federal workforce has been moving in one direction for decades—downward. It now stands at less than 2%. At the same time, we’ve asked federal agencies to take on more responsibilities—from airport security to combating deadly new diseases. And many of government’s already existing challenges have become more complex over time. Disaster response is just one example. 

Mindlessly hacking away at the federal workforce is reckless, cruel and wasteful. Undoing the damage already done will take years. And Musk is just getting started.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Musk, Elon, Trump

Climate Change is on the Chopping Block

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
6

At the blog called “Wonkette,” a writer called “Doctor Zoom” described the Trump administration’s determination to ignore climate science. Apparently, the “golden age” of our nation was the 1950s, before most people had given any thought to the environment and to the human role in fouling the air and the waters. Ignorance is bliss when you are ignorant.

Leading the charge to deny climate change and science is Lee Zeldin, the Trump-appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin was a member of Congress who represented the East End of Long Island, an environmentally fragile area that is constantly threatened by climate change–beach erosion as water levels rise, the die-off of lobsters and scallops due to pollution and the warming of the seas. He should know better, but loyalty to Trump matters more to him than the damage suffered daily by his former district.

Doktor Zoom writes:

The Trump administration appears to be ready to take another wrecking ball to climate science, according to a report in the Washington Post Wednesday (Internet Archive link). EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, acting on yet another of Trump’s first-day executive orders, “has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change, according to three people briefed on the matter,” who were all not named because they aren’t authorized to say what’s going on in the Fascism Factory. 

Zeldin wants Trump to do away with the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, an official statement of widely held scientific consensus that underpins the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other planet warming gases under the Clean Air Act. It’s kind of a big deal, and wiping it away is just one more step in the administration’s agenda of replacing science with far-Right ideology that removes legal constraints on fossil fuel use. 

The original 2009 finding was based on over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers on climate change, involved the work of hundreds of scientists, and included over 500 pages of public comment. It came in response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that determined that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act; that ruling directed GW Bush’s EPA to stop fucking around and make a formal determination as to whether greenhouse gases endanger human health or welfare. Bush’s EPA finished its assessment in 2007, determining that yes indeedy, greenhouse gases are not healthy for children or other living things. 

Notoriously, however, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget refused to open the email with the EPA finding, leaving it to whoever won the 2008 presidential election. We shit you not! 

Barack Obama’s administration did its own version of the “endangerment finding,” which went through all the proper rule-making processes, and that’s the one that Zeldin’s EPA wants to undo. Eventually, the 28-page Bush EPA finding was also released in response to a public records request; at the time, an Obama EPA spokesperson said the earlier document “demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today.”

But three months ago, thanks to a narrow plurality of votes, science suddenly became totally different, because Trump and his crowd say it is. Isn’t science amazing?

As the Post explains, Trump’s executive order told the EPA to review the 

“legality and continuing applicability of” the endangerment finding. The order gave Zeldin 30 days to submit recommendations to Russell Vought, the head of the White House budget office.

And you can just bet that Trump knew exactly what he was ordering! No way some oil lobbyists wrote that EO for him. 

This time out, it appears that the EPA has completed its review and found that greenhouse gases are in fact no big deal, but we won’t see the finding until the administration is good and ready. EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou didn’t offer any comment to the Post either, simply saying in an email that “EPA is in compliance with this aspect of the President’s Executive Order.”

We bet once it’s released, it’ll be backed up by some very compelling science, like calling climate change a Marxist plot to destroy American prosperity. Those three anonymous insiders say that the effort to undo the endangerment finding has been getting advice from “Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff at the end of Trump’s first term and wrote the EPA chapter in the conservative blueprint Project 2025,” and that’s probably all the science necessary. Gunasekara is so good at science that she’s not only a climate and energy expert, she also moonlights as an expert for Republican congressional hearings on how woke corporations are turning children transgender, so how’s that for a broad range of expertise? Yes, we know: You were told there’d be no polymaths.

Haha, we are kidding! In fact, Ms. Gunasekara probably knows less about climate science — or any science — than the average blogger, because she is not a scientist at all, but a paid liar about science. She has an undergrad degree in communication and media studies, and a law degree from U of Mississippi, and that’s enough to have gotten her quite a few jobs lobbying against science and praising the poor victimized oil industry. 

One of her early jobs was as an aide to the late Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma); Gunasekara was the lucky staffer who got to hand him the very snowball that he tossed on the Senate floorin 2015 to prove there’s no such thing as global warming. 

That was a decade ago, and despite that demonstration, the planet has just kept getting hotter. That’s the thing about science: It’s true even if you don’t believe it. It’s true even if it leads to conclusions that might hurt oil industry profits. It will keep being true even when (we could say “if,” but come on) the EPA proclaims that greenhouse gases do not endanger humans and that Donald Trump is wearing a fine new suit of clothes that only smart people can see. 

Needless to say, climate advocates aren’t planning to let Mad King Donald redefine greenhouse gases as Our Industrious Friends, even if his uncle was a professor at MIT and he has a “natural instinct for science.” David Doniger, an attorney and senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Washington Post that if Trump’s EPA “proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare,” well then, “We will see them in court.”

And even if the Supreme Court somehow decides science isn’t real and that a president has the power to nullify it, setting back the fight against climate change for as long as he holds power and making America a pariah nation, we can still point to the evidence — the rest of the world will keep it — and say, “And yet it warms.”

Categories Environment, Extremism, Science
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