Jeff Bryant: Linda McMahon’s Gaslighting of Democratic Senators Was “Elegant”

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
19

Jeff Bryant, veteran education journalist, covered Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearings for The Progressive. She is, of course, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education. Everyone was stumped by her ability to dodge every question. Bryant said she was “elegant” in her obfuscations.

McMahon accepted the leadership of a department that Trump wants to abolish. She doesn’t know much about the department, so she had the challenge of defending an impossible position. She will lead a department that she wants to kill off.

McMahon became a billionaire with her husband, as an entrepreneur in the wrestling entertainment business. She may not know much about the functions of the U.S. Department of Education, but she has very strong and extremist views about education. She is Chairman of the Board of the America First Policy Institute. Go to its website and you will see what I mean. AFPI is closely allied with the aims of groups like Moms for Liberty. McMahon’s group thinks that teachers are “indoctrinating” students with radical ideas about race, gender, and America.

As Bryant writes about her testimony, she seems to have no strong views at all. Don’t be fooled.

He writes:

U.S. Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, likely spoke for many viewers of Secretary of Education appointee Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearinglast week when he said, while questioning McMahon, “I guess I’m frustrated . . . . This whole debate we’re having right now, it just feels like it’s untethered from just the reality on the ground.”

Kim’s frustration grew from his exchange with McMahon about President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut and dismantle the Department of Education, in particular, the department’s Office for Civil Rights, and how that squares with the department’s obligation to address what Kim described as “a surge in antisemitism” in schools and on college campuses. McMahon’s ensuing non-answer—she pledged only to examine “what the impact” of the cuts would be—was just one example of her tendency throughout the hearing to obfuscate or respond to questions with platitudes.

During the hearing, McMahon refused to give U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, a clear answer to his question about whether schools that have race- or gender-related afterschool clubs are in violation of Trump’sexecutive order to eliminate federal grants to organizations that support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Murphy called her lack of clarity “chilling.”

When Delaware Democratic Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester asked McMahon if she believed that every school receiving federal dollars should follow federal civil rights laws, McMahon said, “Schools should be required to follow the laws,” but refused to provide a straight answer when Blunt Rochester then asked, “If private schools take federal dollars, can they turn away a child based on a disability or religion or race?”

McMahon stated her resolve “to make sure that our children do have equal access to excellent education,” but said that was a responsibility “best handled at the state level”—even though the failure of states to ensure equal access was a major reason for the Department of Education’s creation in 1980. 

While she affirmed that many of the education department’s programs were established by law—though she was unsure of how many—she suggested that legally established education department functions might be relocated to other federal departments. When asked what she would do if Trump ordered her to carry out a policy change that violated congressionally established law, McMahon said, “The President will not ask me to do anything that is against the law,” which hardly seems plausible…..

Please open the link to finish the article. It was Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire who said that McMahon was engaged in “elegant gaslighting.”

Bryant defines gaslighting:

Gaslighting—a process by which a person is psychologically manipulated through a pattern of comments or actions intended to make them question their perceptions of reality or accurate memories—more or less describes what Republicans have done with education policy for the past forty or fifty years.

Categories Education Reform

Jeff Bezos Tells Opinion Writers What to Write

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
18

It’s dizzying to watch the changing views of Jeff Bezos since he bought the Washington Post. First, he pledged not to interfere in the editorial content of his prize bauble. Last fall, he yanked an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. Now he has new instructions for editorialists and opinion writers: we support personal liberties and free markets.

Joshua Benton of The Nieman Lab has the story. Open the link to read more reactions.

Benton writes:

The thing about American newspaper opinion sections is this: Their owners get final say. If the man who signs the checks — it’s almost always a man — really really really wants to see his cocker spaniel run City Hall, you’ll probably see “Our Choice: Fluffernutter for Mayor” stripped atop the editorial page. For generations — from Murdoch to Loeb, Hearstto Pulitzer, Daniels to Greeley — this has been one of the overriding perks of media ownership. If Jeff Bezos wanted to turn The Washington Post’s opinion section over to an AI-powered version of Alexa, he’d be within his rights to. So his announcement this morning — that Post Opinions would henceforth reorient “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets” — is, in a sense, merely restating the traditional droit du seigneur given over to capital.

But the scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering.

Let’s get the motivation out of the way. This is the same Jeff Bezos who decided to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election — a move that led to more than 250,000 paying Post readers cancelling their subscriptions within days. The same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary — the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70% of which will go directly into Trump’s pockets. All that cash seems to have served as a sort of personal seat license for Bezos, earning him a spot right behind the president at the inaugural. The tech aristocracy’s rightward turn is by now a familiar theme of the post-election period, and it doesn’t take much brain power to see today’s announcement as part of the same shift. 

But Bezos’s assertion of power is downright laughable compared to the rhetoric he was using just four months ago when trying to justify his killing of the Harris endorsement. Remember his muddled, oligarch-splaining op-ed? His core argument back then was that the worst thing a newspaper’s opinion section could do is appear to be taking one side politically.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Endorsing a candidate for president is bad because it can create the perception of bias — that the newspaper is institutionally tilted to one side or another. 

So the solution is…to have the owner spend months shipping millions off to Trump HQ and then declare that certain opinions not in favor on the political right will now be verboten in the Post’s pages?

Bezos, February 26, 2025: We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

Back in October, Bezos was saddened by even the concept that his personal interests might influence the Post’s content.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post.Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.

But of course — when one of the wealthiest humans in the history of the species decides to block critiques of “free markets” from one of the nation’s most important news outlets, it has nothing to do with any of his interests. Completely unrelated.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity…

I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

A few months ago, Bezos was confident that the Post had to differentiate itself from the swarm of misleading online content by being staunchly independent of any ideological agenda:

Bezos, October 28, 2024: Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions…

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world?

But today, the existence of all that internet muck is positioned as a perfect excuse to abandon all desire for a broad-based opinion section.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

So, to recap: A newspaper can’t be seen as taking a side. Until it’s essential that it be seen as taking a side. Bezos would never use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. Until he decides he must use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. 

As was the case in the fall, the problem with these swings is less their content than their naked service to one man’s agenda. A newspaper is free to endorse or not endorse whoever it wants. An owner is free to shape his opinion section to his will. But the realpolitik context of those decisions clashes wildly with Bezos’s lecturing tone and freshman-level political analysis. I doubt today’s announcement will generate another 250,000 subscription cancellations, if only because there are so many fewer subscribers left to cancel. But the impact will be felt. Only three months ago, the Post was prepping a plan to “win back” wayward subscribers by focusing on the paper’s star reporters and columnists — people like Ashley Parker, Eugene Robinson, and Dana Milbank. Parker’s already jumped ship; how are opinion voices like Milbank and Robinson supposed to fit into the new no-critiquing-the-genius-of-unrestrained-markets regime?

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Freedom of the Press, Media

Arkansas: A Brief, Powerful Demonstration of Critical Race Theory

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
26

Trump and his acolytes have thrown around the term “critical race theory” without e we defining it. He picked it up from rightwing extremist Chris Rufo, who thought that it could be used as a blunderbuss to smear public schools. He convinced large numbers of anxious white parents that the public schools were teaching their children to be embarrassed and feel guilty about being white. That, Rufo implied, was the inevitable result of teaching the unpleasant facts about slavery, Jim row, and racism.

Here is a different point of view, written by Alan Leveritt in The Arkansas Times.

He readily admits that he is a beneficiary of critical race theory.

He writes:

Believed to be circa 1945, a map illustrates redlining practices in the Little Rock area. Red means Black neighborhoods and no loans, while green means white neighborhoods and access to FHA loans.

Credit: dsl.richmond.edu

I came close to graduating from college, damn close in fact. Last I looked (about 30 years ago) I was three hours and an overdue parking ticket short of a history degree from UA Little Rock. But even though I remain a doubtful scholar, I am a devoted student of Arkansas history and its ability to instruct us regarding some very big issues facing our country. 

I am, of course, talking about critical race theory. 

Army 1st Lt. J.P. Leveritt came back from World War II, got his master’s degree in physical education and in 1950, along with my mother, built one of the first houses in Lakewood in North Little Rock for $8,000. Thus began my family’s long and beneficial association with critical race theory. 

To paraphrase the Oxford American Dictionary, critical race theory argues that many of our social and economic institutions have been created for and by white people. Those institutions, many dating back almost a century, were designed to lift white people up and keep Black people down. I am a direct beneficiary of that system. 

When President Franklin Roosevelt tried to create the Federal Housing Administration as part of the New Deal, his proposal to make home ownership accessible to ordinary people through federal home loan guarantees met with opposition from members of both parties. What we take for granted today was just one step from communism then. Southern Democrats ultimately agreed to support the establishment of a Federal Housing Administration on the condition that Black citizens be excluded. Now white people could more easily become homeowners and Black people could more easily become renters. 

When my parents bought their home in Lakewood, they had to sign a covenant never to sell to Black buyers. This was an actual FHA requirement. Had they not signed, the FHA would have refused to guarantee them any loans in Lakewood. If Black people could move into Lakewood, the property values there would crater, putting the FHA loans at risk, was the explanation. 

Another FHA innovation was to rate neighborhoods based on class and race, the thought being that neighborhoods occupied by Black people were too risky for government guaranteed loans. The Little Rock/North Little Rock redline map is color-coded, with green neighborhoods approved for FHA loans and red neighborhoods (predominantly African American) ineligible for bank loans. Thus the son of Lakewood homeowners inherits $175,000 upon his mother’s death in 2012, while the Black son of Rose City renters gets nothing. 

This is an example of critical race theory in action. The primary source of intergenerational wealth is home equity. Even though Black households earn 60% of what white households earn, they only have 5% as much wealth. That wealth should have come from home ownership, which never occurred because the game was rigged. 

My dad had a good war. He grew up in Smackover and went to Arkansas A&M at Monticello, where he played for the Rambling Boll Weevils and learned deep tissue massage as a trainer. He was headed to North Africa as a medic but through a series of happy accidents, wound up in the White House as President Truman’s masseuse and private trainer. 

As with all vets after the war, the GI Bill allowed him to further his education and receive low-interest home loans among other benefits. But while the language of the GI Bill was inclusive of all vets, it was administered by the states, which meant that Black vets, especially in the Jim Crow South, received on average 70% of the benefits their white comrades did. Despite the GI Bill of 1944 offering free college education, it was 11 years before the first Black veteran enrolled as an undergraduate in a state-supported college in Arkansas with the exception of all-Black Arkansas AM&N. Up to then, they were directed to vocational schools if at all.  The low-interest home loans the GI Bill provided weren’t much help, either. Because Black veterans could not live in white neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods were redlined, they seldom could get a loan to buy a house where they were permitted to live. 

Discrimination for FHA mortgages and GI benefits has in part been remedied by various civil rights laws, many of them from President Lyndon Johnson’s time. But to understand the great economic disparity between the races, we need to know history, especially Arkansas history. The economic disparities we see today are a direct result of what happened years ago when we came up with race-based barriers to education and wealth. 

Why would our Legislature and governor try to disappear this history? Why would they try to decertify an Advanced Placement African American Studies class in our high schools, or discourage honest study of systems that set some of us up to thrive but left others to struggle? Their argument that if we teach these facts, some white child might be made to feel guilty is pure nonsense. 

Get over it. It’s our history. Teach our kids the truth and maybe they will be better people than we are. 

Categories Arkansas, Bigotry, Racism

SCIENCE: Ex-Trump Official Warns that Canceled Contracts Will Harm Efforts to Improve Education

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2025 //
16

Science magazine interviewed former leaders of the Institute for Education Sciences, where DOGE canceled scores of contracts. One thought it was great, the others thought it was alarming.

Science reports:

The sudden cancellation Monday of hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts to collect information on the state of U.S. education will blind the government to important trends from preschool to college and beyond, according to education researchers angered by the move. The decision to terminate a reported 169 contracts at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) follows other assaults on federal statistical agencies triggered by a slew of executive orders from President Donald Trump. It was orchestrated by the administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk, which said the cancellation affects $881 million in multiyear commitments.

Scientists opposed to the move say it promises to disrupt research on the problems in U.S. schools, including declining student mental health, the growing gap between low- and high-achieving students, and rising chronic absenteeism.

“In my view, the termination of these contracts is capricious and wasteful and cruel,” says sociologist Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation, which supports research seeking to improve the lives of young people. “It’s taking a sledgehammer to what should have been a judicious process of evaluating those contracts, the vast majority of which are worth the investment…”

Education policy analyst James “Lynn” Woodworth led NCES during the first Trump administration and is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Woodworth described to Science how the cancellations will affect nearly all federal education statistical efforts and the researchers who rely on the data.

Q: Why is ending these contracts such a big deal for NCES?

A: Unlike other federal statistical agencies, NCES can use only a tiny slice of the money IES gets from Congress to hire staff to carry out these duties. So it has to contract out almost all of its work. NCES has fewer than 100 employees, and more than 1000 contractors.

Q: What’s the immediate impact on the work now going on?

A: Some of these surveys are now in the field. For others, researchers are analyzing the data that’s been collected. All of that work is being stopped, immediately, which means all the money that’s been spent getting to that point is just wasted.

Q: What will happen to the data?

A: It’s not clear. NCES doesn’t have its own data center, because NCES has never been given the funds to set one up and hire people to run it. So the data are held by the contractors. And when their contract is terminated, is the money for data storage also being terminated?

Q: The Department of Education has said its decision won’t affect the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), dubbed the nation’s “report card,” a massive activity managed by NCES. But it relies on data from other NCES surveys that have now had their contracts terminated. What’s your take?

A: NAEP is based on the test results of a small but representative sample of U.S. students. To figure out which students or which school should be included in your sample, you need the data from the CCD [Common Core of Data, an NCES-managed database on students in U.S. public schools]. Another NCES survey, the PSS [Private School Survey], provides NAEP with the same data for private schools. Without the data from the CCD and the PSS [whose contracts are now terminated], you can’t select and create a proper sample. And that is true not just for NAEP. It will affect every researcher in the country who uses CCD as the frame for sampling and weighing of their survey population.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Extremism, Research, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Florida: “Support Our Schools” Fights for Public Schools in Sarasota

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2025 //
1

In Sarasota, supporters of public schools are pushing back against Trump’s plan to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

Residents, students lobby school board amid Department of Education uncertainty

By Heather Bushman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The biggest story from this week’s Sarasota County School Board meeting didn’t comefrom the agenda, or even from inside the board chambers: All eyes were on Washington and how the board will respond to turmoil over national education policy.

About 40 Sarasota County students and residents rallied outside the School Board chambers before Tuesday’s meeting to question the potential elimination of the U.S. Department of Education by the Trump Administration and what it could mean for local schools. The group, which packed the meeting chambers, voiced concern for a potential loss of funding to public schools and asked the board for clarity on the possible local impacts.

Local advocates said they worried any reduction in federal funding could put disabled and underprivileged students at risk, with threats to Title I allocations and other programs permeating the national conversation. Attendees of the pre-meeting rally, which was organized by local education advocacy group Support Our Schools, waved signs and echoed chants asking the board to put “students before politics” and to ensure “government for all every day.”

Zander Moricz, a Pine View School alumnus and founder of the SEE Alliance, said the School Board needs to ensure local programs remain funded if the national department dissolves.“There is no plan to make sure that those resources are maintained and that those impacted students have the support structure that they need,” Moricz said. “We need to ask, ‘What is the plan? How are you going to make one? What are you going to do about it?’”

The ultimate effect of potential Department of Education cuts on Sarasota County Schools is unclear. Funding marked specifically for special programs could be distributed as general block grants to be used at the states’ discretion, which would mean each state receives a lump sum and can decide how to distribute it.

Also in question are 504 plans, which are unfunded mandates that require accommodations for students with disabilities. Florida is among 17 states that joined a lawsuit seeking to find section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act — the section that outlines the 504 plans — unconstitutional.

Sarasota County Schools received more than $71.8 million in total federal funding this school year, according to its adopted 2024-25 budget. Parts of that allocation include $11.4 million in Title I funds and $12.3 million in Individuals with Disabilities (IDEA) funds, which account for a combined almost 40% of the district’s $60 million in special revenue grants.

Sixteen Sarasota County schools are listed as Title I schools, and Support Our Schools calculated that the IDEA funds translate into 170 special education teachers across the county.

About 15 speakers implored board members to provide guidance on how they’ll keep these plans and funds in place. Sebastian Martinez, a Sarasota County Schools alum, said he understands national Department of Education proceedings are out of the district purview, but he urged them to prepare for potential impacts at the local level.

“As an individual School Board, I’m not asking you to fight the feds,” Martinez said. “I’m asking you to be proactive.”

Speakers asked the board to pass a resolution affirming it will maintain its current fundingto programs even if the federal funds are allocated as a block grant. Several referenced board member Bridget Ziegler’s resolution to reject Title IX protections against gender identity discrimination brought forth by the Biden Administration last May and pushed the board to take a similar stance against federal policy — albeit this time from the other side of the aisle.

Ziegler said federal cuts will focus on cutting costs at the federal level, not on reducing program funding. Though she said she’s not certain what will happen, Ziegler cited the $80 billion in operational costs that the federal government would save if the department dissolved and said she supports deregulating the department in the name of efficiency.

“Those are the monies that will actually be reduced, not the dollars geared toward those specified families and students,” Ziegler said. “It’s creating an unfair narrative that’s causing a lot of heartburn.”

Board member Tom Edwards assured the audience that the school district will do its due diligence in funding its programs. He noted the board had moved past budget difficulties before and said they would continue to stay on top of its budget.

“I promise you that we’re going to survive this,” Edwards said. “All I can do is the very best I can do.”

Other Sarasota County School Board business

In agenda-related business, the board unanimously voted to renew the charters of Island Village Montessori School and Sarasota Military Academy, whose current contracts expire in June, for 15 years. Island Village currently has 527 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and Sarasota Military Academy currently has 997 students in sixth through 12th grade.

The board also approved Dreamers Academy’s request to expand their enrollment to middle school students, adding sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students to their current kindergarten through fifth-grade enrollment. Dreamers Academy has 519 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and with the approval of its amended contract, it willenroll middle school students beginning with sixth-graders later this year and adding seventh- and eighth-graders in 2026 and 2027.

All three charters gave presentations to the board at a Jan. 7 workshop.

Contact Herald-Tribune Reporter Heather Bushman at hbushman@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @hmb_1013.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Resistance, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Higher Education and “The White Flag of Cowardice”

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2025 //
2

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of equity. Until recently, he was provost at Western Michigan Hniversity. He stepped back to his role as a scholar, and he now speaks his mind freely and forcefully.

He wrote on his blog “Cloaking Inequity” about the choice facing the leaders of higher education: either stand up for academic freedom or hide in fear. His post is about “The White Flag of Cowardice.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Courage, Equity, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Higher Education, Trump

Trump-Appointed Judge Okays Firing of USAID Workers, Gutting Foreign Aid

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2025 //
5

A judge appointed by Trump in 2019 ruled in support of Trump’s decision to terminate most of the civil servants who work for USAID. The evisceration of USAID will hurt American farmers, who sell billions of dollars of grain and other food to USAID for distribution in poor countries. Meanwhile, the cessation of food and medicine will cause many deaths in needy countries. As some say, when it comes to Trump, the cruelty is the point.

A federal US judge on Friday denied a request from two labor unions that sought to block President Donald Trump’s administration from placing thousands of US Agency for International Development (USAID) employees on administrative leave and recalling many stationed abroad.

Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for the District of Columbia acknowledged concerns about widespread terminations but concluded that USAID was “still standing” and thus any harm could be addressed through financial compensation rather than court intervention.

He also noted that federal laws provide domestic USAID employees, or their union representatives, the right to challenge administrative leave decisions, suggesting that the district court likely lacks jurisdiction over the unions’ claims. Judge Nichols further determined that the Trump administration had presented a reasonable justification for its actions, finding that they were “essential to its policy goals.”

He stated:

Weighing plaintiffs’ assertions on these questions against the government’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Where one side claims that USAID’s operations are essential to human flourishing and the other side claims they are presently at odds with it, it simply is not possible for the Court to conclude, as a matter of law or equity, that the public interest favors or disfavors an injunction.

The ruling marks a reversal from Judge Nichols’ earlier decision that temporarily halted the administration’s actions and even reinstated some sidelined employees. Judge Nichols acknowledged that the unions’ constitutional and Administrative Procedure Act challenges to USAID’s dismantling could gain traction over time, but he stated that for now he could only decide on the employment-related claims.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, International, Musk, Elon, Trump

Paul Cobaugh: Patriots Don’t Support Coups!

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2025 //
3

Paul Cobaugh is a military veteran who spent many years in intelligence operations, decoding propaganda. This post is straight talk from a patriot and a vet. His blog is “Truth Against Threats.”

TAT readers,

This is a quick update. For the next week or so, I have an erratic schedule that will keep me from the longer essays, but will intermittently bring you shorter, very succinct thoughts regarding our ongoing coup by a now, fully fascist Republican Party. There is simply no longer a Conservative Party. Today’s GOP has an exclusively MAGA agenda and has either stood by and cowardly watched the ongoing coup, or offered tacit support. 

Speaker Mike Johnson meekly or rather sneakily, trolls the halls of our Capital Building, cheerleading and garnering votes for the Trump/ Musk/ Putin coup. The business of the US is being shoved aside in order to allow Trump/ Musk, dictatorial powers that allow them to overthrow our republic and replace it with profit and power-driven tyranny. VP Vance, antagonizing our allies in Europe while concurrently backing the AfD, Germany’s extreme, right-wing party, that Musk supports.

Trump’s statements claiming that, “nothing is illegal when saving your country,” which he began claiming, when our court system started throwing legitimate legal roadblocks into his and DOGE’s coup machinery. My friends and fellow citizens, Trump’s chaos is intentional and is a diversion from his intended goal, to place all relevant power under the auspices of the Oval Office. Yes, for those that have been reading TAT for a while now, know that this is exactly the 180-day Transition Playbook from Project 2025.Why won’t the media call it a coup?

Why won't the media call it a coup?

As indicated in my ongoing explanations about the coup, time is critical now, if we are to stop or slow this coup’s steamrolling of our constitutional republic. This is Trump’s second attempt, with January 6th, 2021 being his first try. Apparently, our hand-picked SCOTUS decided to forgive and forget that attempt and gave him a second opportunity. Now, we have no Congress, no SCOTUS and an Executive Branch, bursting at the seams with the tyrannical power that our founding fathers decided to limit with a system of “checks and balances.” Today’s GOP, has devolved that system incrementally now for years. 2025, is the year that it came all together for them and resulting in the only major challenge to our republic, other than the Civil War.

Trump’s pre negotiation concessions to Putin, before talking with him about Ukraine, is a shared, power-play between Trump and Putin. His Gaza plan, a recipe for a much larger war in the Middle East and theirs and Modi’s plan to isolate China, while carving up the rest of the world into serfdom imposing fiefdoms for the three of them. 

Considering my extensive background in the USSOCOM, Special Operations community, I’m on solid ground calling Trump, Putin’s and Modi’s efforts radical, globally dangerous actions, a power play unseen on the world stage, since Hitler, Mussolini and Japan’s maneuvering just prior to and throughout WW II. Americans during that time period were also slow to acknowledge and understand the threat that FDR and Churchill understood. Then like now, it was the GOP and American oligarchy that were the obstacles to preparing for war and fighting global fascism. There is no excuse now for Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to deny this coup and hostile takeover. 

Deep inside all Americans that respect and honor our constitution and true American values, lies a gene of resistance. It appears whenever tyranny raises its ugly head and threatens democracy, ours or the world’s. Trump, Putin and Musk, don’t understand patriotic Americans dedication to our actual values and guaranteed constitutional rights. They will find out soon enough if they persist. As I always say, this is not about party, this is quite plainly, about being a true patriot. Real Americans do not worship God, guns and Trump as American values. Real Americans don’t respect or tolerate what I call the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence. 

True principled conservatives have now already left the party or vote against it. Those who voted for Trump, have been brainwashed and no longer have the ability to see truth. Stop trying to convince them. When I write, I write for honest citizens, never a party. This is America for heaven’s sake, not Russia, China, Iran or otherwise. We all get a say and freedom to think as we wish, worship or not, and we all have a citizen’s obligation, to defend our nation and its real values. 

Trump and Musk both are schoolyard bullies. This means that at heart, they are both cowards that will fold in the face of overwhelming resistance. It is up to all Americans to participate and stop allowing the MAGA crowd to misinterpret our history, our values and especially our constitution, simply to support their charismatic Pied Piper. My intentions are to put every legal roadblock in front of the coup-crowd publicly. If this is dangerous in the face of intimidation, then I say as did Admiral Farragut during the Civil War, “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.” 

I aim to continue writing the truth about this coup and its leaders and followers. All of you that are exploding my follower statistics are doing the same. It is what we do as Americans. I’m beyond proud of all of you and am humbly honored, to be among such patriots. 

My warmest regards to all,

Paul

© 2025 Paul Cobaugh
San Antonio, TX 

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, International, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump, Tyranny

Robert Hubbell: The Tide Is Turning Against Trump and Musk

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2025 //
20

Trump’s poll ratings are dropping . The public doesn’t like what they see. #ChainsawElon is not popular. His glee at firing people turns most people off, except Trump’s faithful. Does Trump care about polls? We know he does. If his numbers continue to fall, some Republicans might find a spine.

Elon’s latest overreach caused a backlash. He sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal workers, directing them to list five things they did last week or submit their resignations. Many Trump Cabinet members told their workers not to respond.

Robert Hubbell says that the public is turning sour on Musk’s DOGE tactics.

Robert Hubbell writes:

Trump and Musk have turned the corner—in a bad way. There is a great scene in the motion picture Broadcast News where Holly Hunter tells Albert Brooks that she has “crossed a line” because she is starting to “repel people I am trying to attract.”

At town hall meetings across the nation, Republican representatives are learning the hard way that Trump and Musk are not the anti-hero crusaders they imagine themselves to be. See NYTimes, Republicans Face Angry Voters at Town Halls, Hinting at Broader Backlash. (Behind a paywall; out of gift subscriptions; please post a shared link if you can.) Instead, Trump and Musk personify the “mean-boss” bullies who are born into privilege and spend their time offending and alienating people without a clue they are doing so.

Musk’s weekend email demanding that government workers prepare five “bullets” of their accomplishments in the prior week or face termination was about as “un-self-aware” as it gets. Most people in America hate Elon Musk so badly that he is accomplishing something that Trump’s eight-year run of criminality,

insurrection, and racism could not do: Musk is causing people to turn on Trump. Political gravity is real, and Elon Musk is a gravitational wave of karma that is finally pulling Trump back to political accountability.

I am surprised how often readers respond to my references to Trump’s negative poll numbers by saying, “Trump doesn’t care about polls.”

Assuming that’s true (and I don’t believe it is), that’s not my point. Trump has been able to force the GOP into mass capitulation because his favorability ratings remain stubbornly flat despite his crime sprees, civil findings of sexual abuse, revelations of extramarital relationships while married to the current First Lady, and open courting of white supremacists.

If Trump’s favorability declines, it means two things: (a) Trump is losing support among Independents (and Republicans lose) and (b) Republicans at the margin in Congress can take the risk of voting for the best interests of their constituents rather than the idiotic, self-destructive, revenge-driven agenda of Trump.
It matters that people are beginning to see Elon Musk as the evil billionaire hellbent on controlling the world who is portrayed as the instantly unlikable bad guy in every science fiction and spy-thriller movie. Musk is easy to hate. As hundreds of thousands of federal workers fear for their financial security, Musk wielded a bejeweled chainsaw on stage at the CPAC convention while MAGA acolytes laughed at the now-unemployed working-class Americans who are lying awake at night wondering how they will pay their mortgages.

It doesn’t get any crueler or more clueless than that. Read the room, Elon.

None of this suggests that Trump or Musk will stop their offensive, hateful abuse of the American people. But it does suggest that we can build a firewall in Congress to join the courts in slowing down Trump’s revenge tour. And it should certainly give Democrats confidence that they can craft winning messages and coalitions in 2026 and 2028.

Musk’s email was so unpopular it ran into resistance within Trumpworld. Heads of various federal agencies, in including the FBI, Department of Defense, State Department, intelligence community, and judiciary told employees to ignore the email. See generally, The Hill, Agencies push back on Musk email, including FBI, Pentagon, State, Intel.

Two of the largest unions representing federal workers also advised employees to ignore the email and sent a response to the Office of Personnel Management stating that the request was “plainly unlawful.”

By overstepping in such a mean and petty way, Musk may have sparked a backlash that overturning the Constitution could not achieve.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Minnesota, Musk, Elon, Resistance, Trump

Trump Places MAGA Zealot as #2 at the FBI

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2025 //
8

The news every day is hard to stomach. It was bad enough that the Republicans appointed Kash Patel to lead the FBI, despite his documented history as a Trump flunkie, a conspiracy theorist, and a liar. Republicans who served in the first Trump term were aghast at his selection. Republican Senators choked but confirmed him.

Trump selected as the #2 at the FBI a guy who is even worse than Kash Patel: Dan Bongino.

Bongino started his career in the New York City Police Department, then joined the Secret Service. He left the Secret Service and morphed into an extremist. He ran for office three times and lost three times. He found his niche as a far-rightwing podcaster. He used his wildly popular podcast to stir hatred and fear. He, like Patel, is a conspiracy theorist.

He fervently believes that Trump won the 2020 election but was cheated by the Democrats. He ranted against vaccines and masks during the pandemic. He has said that the FBI is corrupt and should be cleaned out (Patel previously said that if he ever led the FBI, he would close its headquarters and turn it into a museum of the Deep State).

TIME magazine wrote this about Bongino:

The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations. The position does not require Senate confirmation. But Bongino, like Patel, has never served in the FBI, raising questions about their experience level when the U.S. is facing escalating national security threats…

The two are inheriting an FBI gripped by turmoil as the Justice Department over the past month has forced out a group of senior bureau officials and made a highly unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Bongino served on the presidential details for then-Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, before becoming a popular right-wing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Make America Great Again political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election, which Trump and allies have continued to maintain was marred by widespread fraud even though such claims have been widely rejected as false by judges and former Trump attorney general William Barr.

In another article in TIME, Bongino was described:

Bongino, like many new leaders across the Trump Administration including Patel, represents a radical departure from convention for his role. The FBI deputy director, which does not require Senate confirmation, is traditionally an active agent with significant operational expertise and experience—something Patel reportedly agreed to maintain before selecting Bongino.

Bongino, a 50-year-old former Secret Service agent turned conservative-media commentator, is instead most well known for his outspoken support for Trump and his frequent spreading of misinformation, including about the FBI…

Bongino’s popularity and brash style earned him a contract in 2018 with NRATV, the National Rifle Association’s short-lived online video channel. “My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino famously said during a segment in October 2018.

Over the years, Trump took notice of Bongino, frequently posting on social media about his comments. “Did you see what Bongino said?” Trump reportedly told a confidant after seeing Bongino as a contributor on Fox News in 2018, according to the Daily Beast. “He’s so right, he’s just so right about it all. You have to see it.”

In other words, Trump can be certain that he will not be investigated by the FBI. He owns it. Any agent who participated in the investigation of his ties to Putin or his theft of highly classified documents is likely to be ousted.

Trump controls the FBI, the Justice Departnent, the intelligence agencies, and the military.

Its pretty damn terrifying.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Lies, Trump
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