Sherrilyn Ifill: The Truth

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2025 //
8

Sherrilyn Ifill is a law professor who holds an endowed chair at Howard University. She is a former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

In this post, she offers sage advice about how to recharge your batteries and re-engage in the struggle for a better society. She wrote this piece soon after the 2024 election. It’s good advice.

….But ours is a subtle strength
Potent with centuries of yearning,

Of being kegged and shut away
In dark forgotten places.
We shall endure
To steal your senses
In that lonely twilight
Of your winter’s grief.


-Pauli Murray, To the Oppressors (1939)            

The truth is that things are going to get very bad. America has gone over the cliff’s edge. How hard we land in the ravine below remains to be seen. But we are one week in, and things are already quite dire. Trump’s first round of cabinet nominees, and his insistence that his picks be installed without a vote of Congress is a defining moment. It demonstrates that there will be no bottom with this Administration.

Donald Trump and his coterie of supporters are firmly in control of the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. And because they are in charge of this country – which perhaps undeservedly,  has stood as an example throughout much of the world as a symbol of freedom, equality, ethics, the rule of law and democracy – other countries will fall in our wake.

I am saying this now because I have always tried to be honest in my writings and analysis about this country. I say all of this because I have been able over the years to encourage my clients, my colleagues, my staff, my family and community to believe that we can fight and win. I have infected other people with my unshakeable optimism about what we can accomplish to transform this country.

I am going to keep fighting. It’s what I do. But I do not want to lead you astray. Because I do think that many of us – especially those of us in communities likely to be targeted by this Administration – need to see this moment as one in which we are focused on surviving this difficult time. I have faced the fact that we will not be able to move much forward in the next few years. In fact, I expect things to become so dire over the next two years, that we will scarcely recognize the country we live in. I expect that fear and cruelty will become part of our daily diet. We will hear the frightening sound of silence, as those who speak out most boldly against the excesses of the incoming administration, against its policies, against Musk and against Russia, find themselves at cross-purposes with a vindictive and cruel administration with almost unimaginable power to control communications, law, and the sense of reality itself.

Perhaps it won’t be that bad. But we are here in some measure, because far too many failed to imagine that the worst could happen. I have written already about “the nadir,” and I believe we must face it.

And so, our goal now must be first and foremost to survive this dark period with as much of our values, dignity, integrity, work, financial stability and physical and mental health intact as possible. We must also work to protect our families and communities, and to hold in place our most trusted and needed institutions, a modicum of the rule of law, our constitutional commitment to equality and to free expression.
As I have said in earlier pieces, this is “planting time.” Planting is work. That work must be aimed at building ideas, theories, paradigms, institutions, skills, practices, and alliances that we can seed now for a future harvest – a fulsome and lush democracy that will reflect the very best of us.

We are not “watching the Trump show” this time. We’ve seen it already. We can dip in every now and then, but we must not become paralyzed watching the train wreck. We will, of course, push back against injustice, and defend our rights and citizenship when necessary in the courts. We will demand that congressional representatives, our Governors and our Mayors, act to protect our democratic rights. Even when we know they will not stand up for what is right, we must not be silent. We must not make it easy for them to be cowards or to take our rights. We must still call, write and email our representatives and show up at town halls and meetings. Remember that those who have fought for us over these past years are tired too. Let them see us in these spaces and hear from us.

But our primary work must be first and foremost to work in our communities – both physical and ideological. To build them up and to share time and ideas with those committed to democracy and justice. We each need a curriculum of local service.

We also need a personal curriculum that will allow us to contribute to the building of the future we dream of for ourselves and our families. That means that our core work must be to commit during this time to do less watching, and more learning and more growing. We need to become better citizens for the democracy we want. That means we must dedicate time to expanding our thinking and our knowledge, and to building up our democratic imagination. That means our work is to imagine, to ally, to experiment, restore, befriend, study, read, write, serve, and create. Every one of us. Even as chaos swirls around us.

I encourage you to show your children and grandchildren real things – nature, animals, how things are built, how to cook from scratch. Teach them cursive writing, so that they have a signature all their own. Take them to live concerts and theater. Go on field trips. Infuse their lives with memories of things that are true and concrete.

If you teach, use primary documents in your teaching, take your students to historic sites, listen to audio of oral arguments and speeches so that they will feel confident in their understanding of history, and know that history was made by human beings not machines.

If you litigate, do it with the expectation that you will win. And act like it. Show out. Be excellent and remain confident. Those who can still feel shame – whether those at your opponents table or those on the bench – will feel it when you hold the standard high. And your clients will never forget it.

If you organize, never stop. Plant those seeds deep in our communities.

If you hold office. Hold it. Do not give up your power. Use your voice. Master every rule. Make a record. I repeat. Make a record–so that the truth might be known.

To protect ourselves and our loved ones, there are also pragmatic things we must do. I’ve thought of a few:

  • Save some cash. And keep enough in the house for gas and food for a week.
  • Let yourself imagine what you would do if you lost your job in terms of finding new employment, paying rent/mortgage for several months, and start building what you need to be able to meet that moment if it comes.
  • Get needed vaccinations in case new HHS policies result in changes or delays in their development or availability. Stock up on COVID tests, and get the most recent COVID booster. Purchase Plan B if it’s available in your area.
  • Think about tightening security on your electronic devices. Be more thoughtful about social media, and even return to making phone calls and writing letters in some instances. I know it’s old school, but actually memorize the phone numbers of at least two loved ones.
  • Gird yourself spiritually, through your faith or other meditative practices, as we are all likely to hear or confront many disturbing and ugly interactions. Experience art, go on walks, dance, play Spades, Dominoes, Scrabble. We need resilience.
  • Walk away when you need to walk away. Challenge when you need to. Try to always have back up.
  • Take the bystander training offered by groups https://righttobe.org/ so that when you see outrages committed against members of your community or against strangers, you will have practice in how you might intervene or respond.
  • Get an online subscription to a news service from another country so that you have a reliable sense of what’s going on in the world, and how this country is being perceived.  
  • Are your taxes paid, or more importantly, filed?
  • Is your passport up-to-date?
  • If you have money to give – then give to your local library, the food pantry, homelessness services. But also give to cultural institutions. Get a library card and a membership to a museum. Give to organizations working to hold back the worst that this administration may dish out – the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center, and so many others.
  • I am going to write more in this space. I hope you’ll subscribe and even pay a nominal fee to sustain the writing. I’m right here, going through this with all of you. And for me there is beauty in our shared walk. Let’s do this together.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Trump

Doktor Zoom: We Are Going to Miss Joe Biden!

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
10

Doktor Zoom writes on the blog Wonkette. This is an excellent commentary on Biden’s farewell address.

President Biden made mistakes. He was not perfect. But he survived an unprecedented barrage of defamation from the Republications, who did everything possible to portray him as a criminal and to destroy his son. Never mind that the Republican’ star witness against the Bidens was an FBI informant who falsely claimed that Biden and Hunter took millions in bribes, and eventually confessed to being a Russian plant; he was recently sentenced to six years in prison.

Biden is a good man. He is a man with a heart. He is deeply empathetic. We can’t say the same for the felon who succeeds him.

And, despite razor-thin numbers in both houses of Congress, he managed somehow to pass a remarkable lot of legislation that will rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, create good jobs, attract new industries, revive technology manufacturing, and address climate change. Trump inherits a thriving economy–the best in the world–and will claim credit for it. In the 48 months of Biden’s time in office, there was job growth inbb by every single month. Furthermore, he relieved the debts of millions of students, prioritizing those who got debt forgiveness in return for public service. The Republicans accused him of buying votes, but they lied: Biden continued to forgive college debt after the election.

And that Norman Rockwell painting portrayed in the post? It hangs in Biden’s White House. You can be sure it will be moved to storage on Monday.

Doktor Zoom writes:

….Biden made an explicit parallel to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, which warned about the threat of the “military-industrial complex” that nevertheless still has a stranglehold on our economy and politics in a “disastrous rise of misplaced power.” 

Today, Biden said, we should be wary of the “potential rise of a tech-industrial complex”: 

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”

He didn’t name Donald Trump explicitly, just some of those forces that helped him retake power, and which threaten to help Trump and his billionaire buddies undo democracy.

Biden also offered some very concrete steps that might help rein in the destructive forces, although the chances they’ll be enacted during the tenure of the Lord of Misrule seem slim. He started with the easy stuff that won’t happen under Trump. 

“We must reform the tax code. Not by giving the biggest tax cuts to billionaires, but by making them begin to pay their fair share.

“We need to get dark money — that’s that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions — we need to get it out of our politics.”

Then it was on to three ideas that will almost certainly have to wait until we bury Trumpism, at the very least. 

“We need to enact an 18-year time limit, term limit […] and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court. We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they are in the Congress. We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office. The president’s power is … not absolute. And it shouldn’t be.”

OK, maybe the second one, the ban on members of Congress trading stocks, has some ghost of a chance; it also wouldn’t really do anything to keep Trump in check, though it’s certainly a general good-government idea. Maybe Biden threw it in for the sake of parallelism, to call for reforms in all three branches of government. 

Letting the super-wealthy run things, Biden reminded us, is a recipe not just for oligarchy, but for despair: If everyone knows the system is rigged, we all too often give up, or lash out in violence, neither of which is good for democracy. He offered as a hopeful metaphor an image from a 1946 Norman Rockwell painting that hangs in the White House, showing a crew of workers cleaning the torch on the Statue of Liberty, so its “rays of light could reach out as far as possible.” Keeping that torch lit is the work we all have to do as citizens. And while Biden didn’t mention this detail, do keep in mind that Liberty is not enlightening the world with a damn tiki torch, either. 

The bald guy with the pipe is a caricature of Rockwell. Wikipedia notes that ‘The inclusion of a non-white figure working with whites, apparently only noticed in 2011, contravened a Saturday Evening Post policy of only showing people of ethnicity in subservient roles.’ Darn that DEI! 

Biden closed with a rather remarkable passing of the torch, not so much to the incoming wrecking crew, but to the only people who can stop those bastards: Us. 

“I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands — a nation where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure. Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it, too.”

What a contrast to the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, who blithely called America a “shining city on a hill” because it’s so plainly the bestest place possible. (As Sarah Vowell reminds us, adding “shining” was a sunny perversion of the original Puritan metaphor’s dour intent, which warned that everyone would see our sins, like Abu Ghraib). 

But America isn’t a self-illuminating beacon of virtue that’s virtuous just because it’s America. Instead, Biden argues, the light of freedom requires constant maintenance and renewal — and it only keeps shining if we do the hard, even risky work of participatory democracy. 

We’re going to miss that guy.

Categories Biden, Character, Citizenship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Goodness, History, Justice

James Fallows: Joe Biden’s Surprising Farewell Address

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
10

James Fallows is a veteran journalist who has covered national and international politics for decades.

In this post, he explains why Joe Biden’s farewell address surprised him. He expected the same tone and substance he had heard for years. But the last eight minutes were different.

He writes:

I turned on Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech last night mainly from a sense of duty. I’d followed this man’s discourse generally over the decades, and very closely through these past few years. So I might as well see him out.

(For instance, with this look at a State of the Union address two years ago; this about the “music” of Biden’s rhetoric — “like the joke about Wagner’s music, it’s better than it sounds”; this about his challenges as “explainer”; these two—first, and second—about his speeches on the future of democracy one year after the January 6 attacks; and this about his powerful speech at Morehouse College last year. I even proposed a draft speech Biden could give about choosing not to run again, several weeks before he made that announcement for real.)

A running theme in these speech-related items has been Biden’s preference to “deliver tough messages softly,” rather than in a combative tone like Harry Truman’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s. And that is what I expected last night.

Through the first half of the speech, I listened on cruise-control, thinking that I’d been right on how the speech would go. Then suddenly I realized I had been wrong. The final eight minutes of Joe Biden’s final presentation in public life were different from the thousands of hours of rhetoric by him through his career, in a dramatic and instructive way. 

A comparison with another old, departing president is inescapable, and clarifying.

January, 1961: Dwight Eisenhower on the ‘military-industrial complex.’

Dwight Eisenhower is known as the great Allied commander of D-Day, and as a hero who became the first Republican to win the White House since 1928. He was so popular that after incumbent president Harry Truman decided not to run again himself, he tried to persuade Eisenhower to run as a Democrat.

But in rhetoric Eisenhower is known only for two things. One is the speech he did not have to give, in 1944. That is the statement he would have issued if the D-Day landing had failed, in which he would have taken personal responsibility for what had gone wrong. (As he put it in his handwritten draft, “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”)

The other is the final speech he gave as president, his televised “Farewell Address” from the White House three days before he stepped down. The speech got only limited attention at the time. The incoming Kennedy team was young, exciting, a magnet for news. Eisenhower was old, tired, yesterday’s story. 

But as the years go on the Farewell Address has steadily grown in attention and importance. There’s a whole, thick book about the crafting and consequences of this one speech. (That is Unwarranted Influence, by the late James Ledbetter, back in 2011.) This was the speech that delivered the hard-edged warning about the growing anti-democratic influence of the “military-industrial complex,” and introduced that term to popular discourse. The warning was all the more powerful in coming from a revered five-star general. 

You can hear the original audio of Eisenhower delivering the speech in the embedded clip just below. The part that lives in history begins around time 7:30. The 100 seconds that follow are truly remarkable rhetoric, which repay very careful listening. This part is worth actually hearing for yourself.¹LISTEN NOW · 15:31

And here is the script from which Eisenhower read those words, as his final message as an office-holder. The underlines were for his planned cadence—pauses, emphases, multi-word phrases that should be read legato-style, as a smoothly connected whole. 

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January, 2025: Joe Biden, on the ‘tech-industrial complex.’

Nothing in Dwight Eisenhower’s previous rhetoric prepared the public for his farewell address. Nothing in Joe Biden’s pattern of speeches prepared me for the way he ended last night.

Through the first few minutes of Biden’s farewell presentation, I had a sense of the familiar. As expected, the speech took us through highlights of his administration’s achievements, especially on the economy, which (as I’ve frequently argued) will be judged much more favorably by history than they have been by the press or the 2024 electorate.²

And just as predictably, the speech would give us the story of Scranton Joe, and why his long journey has made him believe all the more deeply in the American Dream. That is where he seemed to be going with the elaborate curlicues of his Statue of Liberty analogy, which he pushed to the breaking point and which took nearly three minutes of the speech to spell out.³

Most of Biden’s recent speeches have ended with the assurance that he has “never felt more positive about America.” That’s what he still seemed to be saying when talking about the upcoming “peaceful and orderly transition of power.” A reference to this “peaceful transition” has been part of every farewell address I’ve ever looked at, and to every Inaugural Address⁴—even, grudgingly, the one given eight years ago

Indeed, because of his commitment to that process, Biden said, he “had no doubt that America is in a position to succeed.” But as soon as he had finished those words, about half way into the speech, everything changed.

‘I want to warn the country…’

He paused. He sat up straighter. Until then his body language and tone had seemed valedictory and going-through-the-motions. Suddenly he seemed urgent and engaged. His hands had been neatly folded. Now he gestured directly toward the camera with a pen in one hand. And he said these words:

In my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. 

I said to Deb, “Eisenhower.” And our body language, as listeners, also changed. We leaned closer to the TV as Biden laid out his blunt indictment of “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” 

What were these “concerns,” that troubled a president at the end of four years in the White House, and of half a century in public life? Biden dug right in, including using a word (oligarchy) I don’t think has appeared in presidential annals before.

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before.

Biden went on for a full three minutes in this vein, with comparisons to the worst of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. Only then did he make another historical connection explicit: 

You know, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

He warned us about, and I quote, “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.

He went on to detail, much more specifically than Eisenhower had, exactly why this new oligarchy imperiled democracy. He referred to technologies and challenges that didn’t exist in Eisenhower’s time—TV itself was relatively “new” in 1961—and expressed concerns are at the center of tech-savvy debate in 2025:

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.

The was nothing quaint or old-timey—Bidenesque—about this. It was as direct an indictment of the corruption of money-power as we’ve heard from a serving president in our times. From FDR or Truman? Sure, but that was long ago. …

To finish reading this insightful post, you must subscribe to Fallow’s Substack blog.

Categories Biden, Billionaires, Democracy, Extremism, History

400+ Journalists at “Washington Post” Sign Petition to Bezos

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
6

For decades, The Washington Post has been one of the nation’s premier newspapers, widely admired for its fearless journalism. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, The Post held the reckless Senator from Wisconsin to account. It took the lead in exposing Watergate. A job at The Washington Post was a prize for any journalist.

Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013. It was widely assumed that he had “saved” the paper from its financial woes because of his wealth and that he would not interfere with its editorial independence.

But recently, Bezos’ stance changed. He hired Will Lewis, an editor from the despicable Murdoch empire, to turn the paper around financially. The paper has experienced layoffs and censorship. When Bezos’ spiked the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris last fall, more than 300,000 subscribers canceled. When an editorial cartoon lampooning billionaires (including Bezos) courting Trump was killed, the cartoonist quit.

The morale of the staff hit rock-bottom.

David Folkenflik of NPR reported on the rebellion among the journalists:

One debacle after another has engulfed The Washington Post since veteran newspaper executive Will Lewis became CEO and publisher a year ago this month, with the charge from owner Jeff Bezos to make the storied newspaper financially sustainable.

The appointment of a new executive editor was botched. A killed presidential endorsement led hundreds of thousands of subscribers to cancel. Top reporters and editors left. Scandals involving Lewis’ actions as a news executive years ago in the U.K. reemerged. A clear vision to secure the Post’s financial future remains elusive.

Frustration boiled over on Tuesday night. More than 400 Post journalists, including some editors, signed a petition asking Bezos to intervene.

“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave,” it reads, in part.

The petition never cites Lewis by name, but it reads as a sharp indictment of his leadership. Through a spokesperson, Lewis and the Post declined comment for this story. A representative of Bezos did not return a request for comment.

For this story, NPR interviewed 10 Washington Post staffers inside the newsroom and on the business side of the paper, including some who did not sign the petition. They agreed to speak to NPR under condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions inside the paper.

They say the backlash against Lewis encompasses Bezos to some degree, as he has publicly warmed up to President-elect Donald Trump. (The Post declined comment.)

Bezos’ decision to kill a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the November election led more than 300,000 subscribers to cancel, wiping out much more modest gains The Post had achieved under Lewis. (A spokesperson says The Post has convinced about 20% of those cancelling over the endorsement to remain subscribers.)

The decision also led to some resignations. Recent days at the Post have witnessed the continuation of a months-long parade of departures of highly regarded newsroom veterans — most recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rosalind Helderman, investigative reporter Josh Dawsey and columnist Jennifer Rubin. Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit after her sketch showing Bezos kneeling before Trump with a bag of money was rejected.

The tech titan’s business interests, including Amazon Web Services and the space company Blue Origin, receive billions of dollars from federal contracts. He’s given $1 million toward Trump’s inauguration costs and traveled to Mar-a-Lago with his fiancée to meet with the president-elect. Amazon Studios agreed to pay Melania Trump millions of dollars for a documentary project about her, according to Puck News. Come Monday, Bezos is expected to join Trump advisor Elon Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg on the inauguration platform itself.

The petition asked for a meeting with Bezos.

Open the link to continue reading this important article.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Media

Canadian Member of Parliament Offers to Take California, Oregon, and Washington State

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
17

Trump has suggested that Canada, a huge and sovereign nation, should become the 51st state of the U.S.

Elizabeth Evans May, a member of the Green Party in the Canadian Parliament, suggested instead that California, Oregon, and Washington State should become provinces of Canada.

Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch blog posted this video.

Because Trump suggested that Wayne Gretzky should be elected Prime minister of Canada, She felt compelled to explain to Trump how the Canadian system differs from the American system. The people don’t elect the prime minister. The members of parliament do.

Explaining the basic facts of history and government to the undereducated Trump is a never ending task. He clearly learned nothing about such subjects in high school or college.

Categories Civics, History, Hoax, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

A Corporate Lobbyist Will Run Trump’s White House

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
15

During his campaigns, Trump has insisted that he will ban lobbyists from his team and limit their access to him. This was part of his “drain the swamp” pledge.

But it is a new day in Trump world. Trump hired corporate lobbyist Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, and she will determine who gets meetings with him, which invitations he accepts, which phone calls.

Judd Legum wrote about her role in the new administration:

During the 2024 campaign, Trump condemned the power of lobbyists in Washington, DC, and pledged that, if he returned to the White House, they would have no influence. “Above all, you deserve leadership in Washington that does not answer to the lobbyists… or to the corrupt special interest but answers only to you, the hardworking citizens of America,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on October 5, 2024.

During an interview with podcaster Theo Von on August 20, 2024, Trump stressed that the key to effective government is to “stop listening to lobbyists,” describing himself as “not a big person for lobbyists.” Trump bemoaned that the lobbyists were “winning” at the expense of the American public. When Von pressed Trump on how, exactly, he would limit lobbyists’ influence, Trump suggested ending the revolving door between lobbying and the federal government. “[O]ne way you could stop it is to say if you’re going to go into government, you can never be a lobbyist,” Trump said.

Two days after he won the election, Trump announced his first selection for his White House staff. He picked corporate lobbyist Susie Wiles to be White House Chief of Staff.

In 2011, Wiles joined the Ballard Partners, a Florida lobbying firm founded by Republican operative Brian Ballard. In 2015, according to a report in the New York Times, Trump asked Ballard who could help him win the state. Ballard recommended Wiles. After Trump won the 2016 election, Wiles decided to help Ballard “set up a Washington office rather than join the new administration.” Prior to Trump winning the White House, Ballard Partners had no federal clients.

It was a lucrative decision, with Ballard Partners raking in $70 million in lobbying fees during the first Trump presidency. Wiles personally represented numerous corporate clients for millions in fees, including Swisher Sweets, a tobacco company that markets candy-flavored cigars, Republic Services, a waste management company seeking to avoid a federal requirement to remove radioactive material from a dump in the St. Louis suburbs, and the Consumer Energy Alliance, a front group for the fossil fuel industry.

Most controversially, Wiles registered as “a lobbyist for Globovisión, a Venezuelan TV network owned by Raúl Gorrín.” Globovisión paid Ballard Partners “$800,000 for a year of work.” The contract was purportedly to provide advice on “general government policies and regulations.” But it soon became clear that the contract was part of Gorrin’s “quiet charm offensive for Nicolás Maduro’s government that sought closer ties with Trump.” Days after Ballard Partners dropped Globovisión as a client, Gorrin was charged “for his role in a billion-dollar currency exchange and money laundering scheme.” In 2019, Wiles also registered as a foreign agent for a Nigerian political party.

Even after Wiles was tapped to lead Trump’s 2024 campaign, she continued working as a federal lobbyist, this time as the co-chair of the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs. Wiles reportedly maintained that position until she was named Trump’s new Chief of Staff. The Trump campaign claimed she stopped doing work for Mercury Public Affairs beginning in November 2022, but that is contradicted by federal lobbying disclosures. Wiles was listed as Mercury’s sole lobbyist for Swisher Sweets’ parent company, collecting $30,000 in fees in the first quarter of 2024.

With Wiles in the White House, corporations rush to hire Ballard

Will Wiles’ position as Chief of Staff give the lobbying clients of Ballard Partners a powerful channel to influence federal policy? Federal lobbying disclosures tell the story. Since Wiles’ was named as Trump’s top White House aide, corporations have rushed to sign up Ballard Partners to represent them.

In the 66 days since Wiles’ role was announced, Ballard Partners has signed 28 new federal clients. The amount these new clients are paying has not yet been disclosed.

Among the new clients for Ballard Partners is the crypto company Ripple Labs. The company signed with Ballard Partners on November 13, 2024 and is seeking to influence “regulation of digital assets, cryptocurrencies and blockchain and related legislation.” Last Tuesday, Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, and Stuart Alderoty, Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer, had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump….

Ballard lobbyist nominated to be Attorney General

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, has worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners since 2019. During her tenure, Bondi has represented many clients whom she would be responsible for scrutinizing as the leader of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Bondi was hired by Uber in 2020. While Bondi was representing Uber, the company allegedly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by denying rides to blind customers accompanied by guide dogs. According to a July 2024 report by NBC Bay Area, the DOJ is actively investigating these violations. Bondi would now be in a position to decide whether charges should be filed against Uber or her other former corporate clients. Bondi also represented General Motors, which paid a $500,000 criminal fine in November 2024 for submitting a false report regarding its self-driving cars. The fine was paid as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ.

Geo Group, a private prison company, hired Bondi in 2019 to lobby the first Trump administration, “promoting the use of public-private partnerships in correctional services.” As Attorney General, Bondi could play a key role in Trump’s promised mass deportation campaign, an effort that could mean hundreds of millions in annual revenue to Geo Group. Amazon also employed Bondi as a lobbyist. The massive online retailer and tech company has attracted interest from the DOJ’s antitrust division and, in July 2023, paid a $25 million civil penalty to resolve charges by the DOJ that its Alexa service violated child privacy laws.

As Attorney General of Florida, a position Bondi held before joining Ballard Partners, Bondi developed a reputation for her “business-friendly” attitude. Bondi, for example, decided to drop a case involving the underpayment of state taxes by the travel site Travelocity. Contemporaneously, a lobbying firm representing Travelocity “helped cover the bill to charter a plane to fly… Bondi and other attorneys general to Mackinac Island in Michigan for a meeting of the Republican Attorneys General Association.”

Notably, Eric Holder, who served as Attorney General during the Obama administration, also worked as a federal lobbyist before taking office.

Categories Corporate Reform, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Stand for Children, Standardized Testing

Two of Baton Rouge’s Largest Charters Closing as IDEA Chain Fails and Quits

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
2

IDEA is a major charter chain in Texas that has gone through some ugly financial scandals about spending on luxury items (season box seats at a basketball arena, a foiled plan to lease a private jet, other executive perks). It expanded to Louisiana, thanks to a multi-million grant from the federal Charter Schools Program.

Things did not go well in Baton Rouge, as we learn from this report by Charles Lussier in The Advocate, a New Orleans newspaper.

IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation, two of the
largest charter schools in Baton Rouge, are
closing their doors in May, the last schools in
the state operated by Texas-based IDEA
Public Schools.

It’s the end of a 7-year foray into Louisiana by
the IDEA organization, which came in with
great fanfare as a “proven operator” with
schools in Texas that were ranked among the
best in the nation and graduates who
routinely continued onto college.

IDEA Bridge educates about 1,100 students
and IDEA innovation has about 750 students.
They both opened in 2018.

IDEA schools, however, slipped badly
academically during the COVID pandemic and
did not recover enough to lose their negative
ratings. Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA
Innovation have received F letter grades or
low Ds since the state began rating its public
schools again in 2022.

Both currently have Fs.

Parents received a letter Tuesday from the
charter school management organization that
the organization had made the “difficult
decision” to close the two schools when the
current school year ends. They follow the
closure of IDEA’s two other Louisiana schools,
IDEA Dunn in New Orleans in 2022 and IDEA
University in Baton Rouge in May.

“While we are proud of the determination and
grit of our students, the trust and patience of
our families, and the dedication and
commitment of our teachers and staff, we
have not delivered the academic results our
students deserve, and believe that now is the
time to bring in new options and
opportunities for our scholars and their
families,” according to the letter to parents.

School leaders say they are working with the
East Baton Rouge Parish school system and
the influential nonprofit, New Schools for
Baton Rouge, to identify new school
operators this fall for both the Bridge and
Innovation campuses.

In a statement Wednesday, Taylor Gast, a
spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge
Parish school system, said district staff are in
the process of developing alternatives for the
affected families and plans to have options for
the parish School Board to consider next
week.

“Our foremost objective continues to be
guaranteeing that every student in East Baton
Rouge Parish has access to outstanding,
tuition-free educational opportunities,” Gast
said. “We are prepared to assist IDEA families
and address their needs to the greatest
extent possible.”

The decision to close the two schools was
made Monday night at a special meeting of
the board of directors for IDEA Public Schools
Louisiana. Alicia Myers, an IDEA
spokeswoman, said that school performance
scores released in November — both IDEA
schools earned Fs — prompted “deeper
discussions about the future of IDEA
Louisiana,” leading to Monday’s vote.
“We believe this is the best decision for our
students and families,” Myers said.

IDEA Bridge and Innovation were the original
IDEA schools in Louisiana. Both opened in
newly constructed facilities at 1500 N. Airway
Drive and 7800 Innovation Drive, respectively.
Bridge served students in north Baton Rouge
while Innovation served students in south
Baton Rouge.

Enrollment for IDEA schools in Louisiana
peaked in fall 2021 at more than 3,000
students. It has dropped over the past three
years by about 1,100 students, a 37% decline.
Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation earned
three-year renewals of their charters in early
2023, extending their operations through
summer 2026. School system leaders,
however, warned that getting renewed again
would be difficult unless test scores
substantially improved.

Tuesday’s announcement comes seven
months after IDEA’s other Baton Rouge
school, IDEA University Prep, closed its
doors.

It was the newest school in the IDEA network
in Louisiana. When it opened in 2021, it took
over operations of a low-performing charter
school called University Prep, or UP
Elementary, and expanded into middle school
grades. It grew to more than 600 students,
but then began losing enrollment. Its facility
on Plank Road near the Metro Airport was
purchased in June by another charter school.
Helix Aviation Academy.

IDEA is the largest charter chain in Texas. It was once hailed as an outstanding charter chain. But a year ago, the state put it in conservatorship due to financial problems. IDEA’s leaders have a taste for luxury.

Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Among its many luxury expenses, IDEA kept a private pilot on its payroll.

IDEA originally planned to buy a Beechcraft King Air plane, according to the former senior executive. After discussing the plan, however, the board decided to lease a Cessna Citation jet instead.

The board approved an eight-year lease agreement for the Cessna jet in December 2019.

IDEA agreed to pay $57,000 per month for the jet, which didn’t include the cost of fuel or paying the pilot. The board also voted to buy a hangar at the Weslaco airport for about $528,000.

During the board meeting, an executive assured the board that all costs would be covered by private funds.

News that a charter school planned to buy a jet, however, caused an uproar. IDEA abandoned the plan.

The U.S. Department of Education believed that IDEA would be a huge success. In 2016, when John King was Secretary of Education, the Department gave $12 million to IDEA to expand into Louisiana. IDEA opened four charter schools. All four have closed.

IDEA was Betsy DeVos’s favorite charter chain. She awarded it $260 million to expand while she was Secretary.

O, how the mighty are fallen!

.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Louisiana, Privatization

Jeff Tiedrich: The Nasty Pete Hegseth Clown Show

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
30

Jeff Tiedrich writes a funny, scatologial post about the Pete Hegseth hearings. As he says, it’s going to be a long four years. You should subscribe to his blog so he can continue to write. In the last line of his post, not included here:

Donny Convict is what would happen if Dunning and Kruger had a baby, and then dropped it on its head. he’s too fucking stupid to know just how fucking stupid he is. he has these moronic ideas, and then blurts them out like he’s the biggest genius who ever lived. and the MAGA yokels are right there to gobble it all down. yay, Donny! yay, External Revenue Service

Wikipedia: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their abilities in a specific area, particularly when they have low ability in that task. 

Jeff writes:

the Confederacy of Sewer Clowns Big Top Confirmation Circus rolled into DC yesterday, and the first jester to summersault into the ring was Pete Hegseth.

Pete is, of course, the ahem allegedly publicly drunk, ahem allegedly sexual-abusing goon who Donny saw on Fox News and then picked to head the Department of Defense.

here are a few things we learned about ahem allegedly Piss-Drunk Pete.

Pete is catastrophically unprepared and unqualified for the job.

Senator Duckworth: “…you’re unqualified to do that. you can’t do the acquisition and cross-servicing agreements, which essentially are security agreements. you can’t even mention that. you’ve done none of those. you talked about the Indo-Pacific a little bit, and I’m glad that you mentioned it. can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations, and how many nations re in ASEAN, by the way.”

Hegseth: “I couldn’t tell you.”

Senator Duckworth: “no, you couldn’t, because you couldn’t bother to—”

Hegseth: “I know we have allies in South Korea, Japan and Australia.”

Senator Duckworth: “none of those countries are in ASEAN. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.”

this is the crux of the matter. take away Pete’s ahem alleged predatory behavior towards women. take away the ahem alleged public drunkenness. Pete Hegesth utterly lacks the skills and knowledge required to head the Department of Defense — a massive bureaucracy that employs over 2.91 million people. 

as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, Pete rose to the rank of Major. after that, he became a Fox News morning chat-show bobblehead. there’s a reason that Defense Secretaries are almost always lifetime military officers: it takes a lifetime of experience to acquire the skills necessary to do the job. Pete has none of that.

Pete’s only real qualification for the job — the only qualification that matters to Dear Leader — is that he’ll willingly carry out any order. for instance, Pete seems totally cool with shooting American civilians.

Senator Hirono: “in 2020, then-President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protestors in the legs in downtown DC — an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. would you carry out such an order from President Trump to shoot protesters in the legs?”

Hegseth: [dodges the question]

Senator Hirono: “that sounds to me that you would comply with such an order. you will shoot protesters in the legs.”

Hegseth: [silence]

Subscribed

Pete believes the Geneva Conventions are an intrusive annoyance.

Senator King: “I want to be clear. are we going to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture or are we not?”

Hegseth: “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives to international bodies.”

oh, that’s lovely. we’re going to ignore a decades-old human rights agreement that almost every other nation on the planet abides by, because AMURRIKKKA FIRST. does Piss-Drunk Pete not realize that the Geneva Conventions also protects American soldiers and civilians? treaties only work when all countries abide by them. Pete should have learned this working well with others crap in kindergarten.

Pete seems totally cool with invading our allies’ territory.

Senator Hirono: “would you carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, by force?” 

Hegesth: “President Trump received 77 million votes—”

Senator Hirono: “we’re not talking about the election. my questions is, would you use our military to take over Greenland, an ally of Denmark?”

Hegesth: [refuses to answer the question]

Senator Hirono: “that sounds to me like you would contemplate carrying out such an order.”

Pete has a real problem with women in the military, and is also a willing firehose of right-wing propaganda.

Hegseth: “commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted. and that disparages those women—”

Senator Gillibrand: “commanders do not have to meet quotas for the infantry. commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. that does not exist. It does not exist. and your statements are creating the impression that these exist. because they do not. there are not quotas.”

Pete absolutely does not want women serving in the combat. he wrote a book about it. he thinks women serving in the military is just more DEI crap that the commie Democrats cooked up to make America weak. and Pete’s willing to lie and claim that female combat soldiers are being forced upon commanders.

this ‘women can’t do a man’s job’ nonsense is the same misogynistic bullshit we’re hearing from the screech monkeys, about how Los Angeles is burning to the ground because the LA fire chief is a lesbian.

in Donny Convict’s America, only white men should be in positions of authority.

now let’s ask a Republican why he’s on Team Piss-Drunk Pete.

Senator Rounds: “he wants to bring lethality back in.”

here’s the dictionary definition of lethality: the capacity to cause great harm, destruction, or death — basically, what the United States Military already has.

so, why is Senator Rounds so excited to have the military “restored” to its current state? because MAGA Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that commie-marxist Democrats have turned the US armed forces into a bunch of emasculated sissiex who can’t fight. it’s why Esteemed Senator Fidel Cancun practically orgasmed over Russian army propaganda — because he believes this shit, too.

Donny Convict buys into this nonsense as well. he claims that when he took office in 2017, the army didn’t have any bullets.

it’s a lie so patently dumb that only a MAGA would believe it — but it’s why Republicans are so hot to have Pete come in. he’s going to bring back lethality — and brutality — against our allies, against American protesters, against anyone Dear Leader tells him to.

what could possibly go wrong?

Categories Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Jay Kuo Reports on Pete Hegseth’s Refusal to Answer Questions at His Hearings

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
3

Jay Kuo, lawyer, humorist and political consultant, watched the confirmation hearings of Pete Hegseth for the position of Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is notoriously unqualified. His Republican defenders treated his lack of experience and knowledge as a plus, a breath of fresh air. To charges of drunkenness, adultery, and womanizing, the Republican attitude was “Yawn. Everyone does it.”

Kuo writes:

Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is many things: a serial adulterer, an accused rapist, a right-wing crusader and an often out-of-control drunk.

What he is not is qualified in any way to lead the Defense Department.

But apparently none of that posed any bar to the GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee, who appear ready to send Hegseth through to a full floor vote, which is now expected to go his way along a party line or near-party line vote.

Still, even assuming Hegseth’s confirmation is now assured, Democrats did a good job of laying the groundwork for resistance to and criticism of Hegseth’s leadership. They pulled no punches and demonstrated that it still matters to stand firm on the question of job qualifications, obeying the rule of law, and disqualifying questions of character.

No qualifications? Even better!

Republican senators spent much of yesterday’s confirmation hearing twisting Hegseth’s vices into virtues and his negatives into notches. For example, even though Hegseth has never led an organization of more than 200 people or a department with a budget of hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars, this was somehow a plus.

As the New York Times noted,

Mr. Hegseth and his Republican allies on the panel made the case that his lack of experience compared with previous defense secretaries would be a plus.

Mr. Hegseth said: “As President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they’re retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us?”

His utter inexperience was even “a breath of fresh air” per Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, with Hegseth being an outsider rather than from “the same cocktail parties that permeate Washington.”

In his opening statement, Hegseth even argued that he didn’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years” but that “it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”

This may have made for a good sound bite, but it is disrespectfully false and misleading. It completely whitewashes the fact that his predecessor, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whom Hegseth has implied was a DEI hire, literally ran a war in a desert. Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as Defense Secretary under President Obama, still has shrapnel in him from his service in Vietnam.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) drove home the point that Hegseth simply isn’t qualified for the job when she asked him to name just one country within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet Hegseth began talking about South Korea, Japan and Australia.

“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” responded Sen. Duckworth, who is a combat veteran who lost both legs and mobility in her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter went down during the Iraq War from hostile fire. “I suggest you do a little homework,” she said.

As reporter Jordan Weissmann remarked, “This might seem like a small, embarrassing gotcha, but ASEAN is an acronym you encounter a lot if you do even very basic reading about the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China.”

The Trump “yes” man

Given that Hegseth’s senate confirmation is more or less in the bag, questions around whether he would be an independent check upon Trump’s excessive executive power have grown in importance.

For example, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Hegseth whether the U.S. would abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture. Rather than state that we would, Hegseth responded, “What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”

In a similar vein, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had this exchange with Hegseth that highlighted the danger of having a puppet heading the Pentagon, with loyalty to Trump over the U.S. Constitution:

Sen. Slotkin: “As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? I’m not saying he will. But if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the US Constitution?”

Hegseth: “Senator, thank you for your service, but I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders.”

Sen. Slotkin then pressed Hegseth on this, giving real-world, not hypothetical, instances where his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, apologized for deploying forces in D.C. to put down protests and convinced President Trump not to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Hegseth resisted responding with yes or no answers and refused generally to second-guess or get ahead of conversations that he would have with the president, only grudgingly admitting by the end of the line of questioning that there are “laws and processes under our Constitution that would be followed” (using the passive voice, I should add).

During Sen. Slotkin’s questioning, Hegseth also appeared to confirm that he would use active duty U.S. forces to staff things like detention camps for migrants, which Sen. Slotkin noted the military is not trained to do as it is more of a policing function.

A disqualifying past history

When Democrats had opportunities to question Hegseth about his troublesome history, they scored blows over his alleged sexual assaults, public intoxication, mismanagement of nonprofits and opposition to women in combat.

The most notable exchange occurred between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Hegseth, when Kaine sought to clarify whether any of the behavior of which Hegseth is accused (including allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and spousal abuse) would be disqualifying for a nominee, at least in his opinion, were it proven to be true.

Hegseth repeatedly refused to address Kaine’s questions, claiming again and again that the allegations against him were from anonymous sources and that they were false. Kaine caught Hegseth in a bit of a trap, however, when he laid out the series of instances of adultery that included the incident he claimed as a consensual encounter. Even were that true, it still happened, Kaine pointed out, months after the birth of his daughter by the woman who would become his second wife after he had cheated on his first.

Sen. Kaine pointed out that it was Hegseth’s judgment that concerned him. The exchange is worth viewing in its entirety:

Sen. Kaine later went on MSNBC to underscore how evasive Hegseth had been. “Should committing a sexual assault be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should spousal abuse be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should drunkenness on the job be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. He wouldn’t answer any of them. And that was very telling to me.”

On the question of Hegseth’s alcohol consumption, one GOP committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), rose to defend the nominee. He accused Democrats of hypocrisy, asking whether they had ever demanded senators who showed up drunk to step down from their positions.

This defense was awkward in three respects. First, it seemed to confirm that Hegseth indeed has a drinking problem, just one that is shared by some of Mullin’s Senate colleagues. Second, it completely ignores history because a prior nominee for Secretary of Defense, Sen. John Tower, was denied confirmation precisely because of issues over his excessive drinking and womanizing. And third, as Kaitlan Collins of CNN later pointed out to Mullins during an interview, how is the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon? 

Gaming the system

By the time Hegseth even set foot in the committee room, the game was already rigged in his favor.

The main holdout in the GOP has always been Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a sexual assault survivor and a combat veteran. Ernst has brought attention to the plight of female service members and has pressed for changes to how the Pentagon deals with cases of sexual assault. Because she sits on the Armed Services Committee, a no vote from her likely would have doomed Hegseth, whose nomination might never have even gotten out of committee.

Sen. Ernst had been lukewarm to Hegseth before the MAGA bullying began. As the New York Times reported,

Ms. Ernst initially appeared hostile to [Hegseth], telling reporters that he would “have his work cut out for him.” After a private meeting with Mr. Hegseth, she said on Fox News that she was not yet a “yes” on his confirmation.

Her confession prompted an immediate backlash from outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump, who targeted her with ads and social media posts, while prominent Iowa Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges against her in 2026. 

Within days, Ms. Ernst met with Mr. Hegseth again, and announced that she had been heartened by his promises to audit the Pentagon and appoint a senior official to deter sexual assaults in the military and ensure that female service members would be considered for combat roles if they could meet the requirements.

Sen. Ernst’s political capitulation went beyond merely bowing to GOP pressure. Per reporting by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Sen. Ernst, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), even declined an offer to meet with Hegseth’s accuser—the woman who filed a complaint with the police claiming Hegseth had raped her after a GOP conference in Monterey, California.

So much for supporting victims of sexual assault.

The FBI background check on Hegseth was already woefully deficient because its investigators interviewed none of Hegseth’s accusers or former spouses. This is contrary to standard protocol, which advises interviews of all current and former spouses of nominees. When the FBI background check finally came back, it came with instructions not to share it with any of the Committee members beyond the chair and the ranking Democratic member.

Finally, to hamstring the vetting process even further, the GOP only permitted only one round of questioning of Hegseth, which completed after just four hours yesterday. Seven minutes for each senator to question the nominee, who largely refused to answer the question asked, produced the desired result: It barely scratched the surface of what the public is entitled to know.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Texas: Moderate Republican Wins as Speaker of the House with Democratic Votes

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
11

The top elected leaders of Texas are far-right extremists–Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Abbott is passionate about school vouchers, despite the fact they would harm rural public schools. He called multiple special sessions of the legislature last year specifically to pass vouchers, but failing each time.

Gov. Abbott got more than $10 million from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass to oust the moderate Republicans who blocked vouchers. He won most of those races, defeating conservatives who prioritized their constituents over the wishes of the Governor, Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos and the Texas oil and gas billionaires Wilks and Dunn, devout evangelical supports of vouchers.

A new session of the legislature opened. The hard right backed Rep. David Cook to be Speaker of the House. Rep. Dustin Burrows ran against him. Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton supported Cook. Burrows won. Burrows received more Democratic votes than Republican votes.

The Texas Tribune has the story.

Burrows won the speaker’s race after two rounds of voting, edging out Cook by a vote of 85-55. During the first round, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez-Ramos, a Richardson Democrat, received 23 votes from fellow Democratic members — enough to keep Burrows and Cook from reaching the majority threshold of 76.

In the ensuing runoff round, twelve Democrats who had voted for Rodríguez-Ramos switched to Burrows. He also netted two more GOP votes from members who defected from Cook. Nine members marked themselves present without voting for either option, and one member, Yvonne Davis of Dallas, was marked as absent.

Burrows’ winning coalition was made up of 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans, drawing instant backlash from hardline members and activists who vowed revenge in next year’s primaries.

The Abbott wing of the party–more MAGA than Trump–is furious.

The question is: Does this mean that Abbott’s voucher plan will lose again?

A time for watchful waiting.

Categories Billionaires, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Republicans, Texas, Vouchers
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