Arkansas: 88% of Students Who Use Vouchers Never Attended Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2025 //
4

Long ago, back in the 1990s, the idea of vouchers was proposed as a brand new idea. Its advocates said that vouchers would “save poor kids trapped in failing public schools.” They presented themselves as champions of poor and needy kids and predicted that vouchers would change the lives of these children for the better. Eminent figures proclaimed that school choice was “the civil rights issue” of our time.

Of course, as many writers have explained, vouchers were not a brand new idea. They were popular among segregationists after the 1954 Brown decision. Several Southern states passed voucher laws in that era that were eventually knocked down by federal courts as a ploy to maintain all-white schools.

Trump’s first Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos –never considered a leader of civil rights–championed vouchers. So does Trump’s current Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

But guess who’s getting vouchers? Not the poor kids. Not the neediest kids. Mostly the kids who were already enrolled in religious and private schools.

The story is the same in every state but accentuated in states where every student can claim a voucher, regardless of family income, as in Florida and Arizona.

Now the numbers are available in Arkansas: 88% of students who use vouchers never attended public schools.

Benjamin Hardy of The Arkansas Times reports:

On Oct. 3, the Arkansas Department of Education released its annual report on school vouchers (or as the state calls them, “Educational Freedom Accounts”). The voucher program, which was created by Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Arkansas LEARNS Act in 2023, gives public money to private school and homeschool families to pay the cost of tuition, fees, supplies and other expenses.

Among the takeaways of the new report: Just one of every eight voucher participants in Year 2 of the program was enrolled in a public school the year before. (Year 2 was the 2024-25 school year; we’re currently in Year 3.)

This matters because Sanders and other school choice supporters often frame vouchers as a lifeline for poor families to escape failing public schools. Opponents of voucher programs say the money tends to mostly go to existing private school and homeschool families. 

Private school families as a whole tend to be higher income. And because the Arkansas program is open to everyone, regardless of how wealthy they are, the voucher program puts money in the pockets of many households that could already afford private school. 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Hoax, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

John Thompson on Hanna Rosin’s Podcasts about Oklahoma Education, Part II

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2025 //
8

In part two of Hannah Rosin’s podcast about former Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, Walters consistently responded to criticisms of his actions by calling them lies. My take on podcast part one is here.

And spoiler alert! Rosin closes with recent headline-grabbing stories about Walters, setting the stage for his latest assault on public education.

First, in August it was learned that his ideology test for teachers started with: “What is the fundamental biological distinction between males and females?”

Second, Walters ordered all public schools to observe a moment of silence in honor of the death of Charlie Kirk. Now, the “State Department of Education says it’s investigating claims that some districts did not comply.”

Third, “Walters announced a plan to create chapters of Turning Point USA—the conservative organization co-founded by Kirk—at every Oklahoma high school.”

And, Walters, who has resigned as Superintendent, is now the CEO of the Teachers Freedom Alliance, which is part of the Freedom Foundation, a “far-right, anti-labor union think tank.”

So, it is not surprising that Walters responded to Rosin’s questions by attacking teachers’ unions which he said, “have been one of the most negative forces in recent American history. I’ve never seen anything like it—the ideology they’ve pushed on kids. It’s unfathomable to me that they did that.”

Rosin and Walters started part two with a discussion about his new curriculum, that has been paused by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which has “dozens of references to Christianity,” and “an instruction to high-school history students to identify discrepancies in the 2020 election.

Walters then described the 2020 election as “one of the most controversial, the most controversial election in American history.

Rosin pushed back, citing Walters’ mandate to “Identify discrepancies in election results,” which, of course, challenges the true facts about the election.

Rosin then brought up the controversy where board members saw nude pictures on TV during the board meeting.

Walters’ replied, “they’re outrageous liars.”

He then claimed that the board members brought up that “whole concoction” in order to stop the approval of “a new private school that has American values … [they] tried to hijack the board. They tried to hijack the agenda, the vote, everything else.”

Walters’ also attacked “radical gender ideology.”

Walters’ curriculum also focused on identifying “the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab and the economic and social effects of state and local lockdowns.”

Rosin then interviewed a teacher who in 2016 told his majority Latino students something he would never say now:  “’I would never vote for something that would bring harm to you.’” Which, he said, put his students at ease.”

The teacher is now debating about whether he can post a picture of John Lewis, with the quote, “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up.”

Rosin again spoke with Summer Boismier who lost her license due to having The Fault in Our Stars, The Hate U Give, and the Twilight saga among the 500 books in her classroom. Boismier has “applied to more than 300 positions—with zero offers.” She now calls herself “educational kryptonite”

In conclusion, Walters says:

I went to war with a group that has an unlimited amount of money, nearly an unlimited amount of political power, that had bought off so many elected officials, that have bought off so many different interest groups. And we took on an education establishment of administrators, school-board associations, teachers’ unions.

Now he leads Teacher Freedom Alliance, which is a part of the Freedom Foundation which claims to be:

More than a think tank. We’re more than an action tank. We’re a battle tank that’s battering the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas.

Walters claims he’ll lead the war for:

Educators’ real freedom, freedom from the liberal, woke agenda that has corrupted public education. We will arm teachers with the tools, support, and freedom they need, without forcing them to give up their values

By the way, there are about 4 million teachers in the U.S. And when I last checked the Teacher Freedom web site, they proclaimed that they represented 2,748 teachers, presumably, in the nation. Now I can’t find their numbers on the site. So, I wonder whether Walters’ army is up to the task of defeating public school educators and their norms.

And, at least according to the Tulsa World, Walters is being replaced by Lindel Fields, a retired CareerTech administrator, who it is hoped will “calm the waters.”

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Oklahoma

John Thompson Reviews Hanna Rosin’s Report on the Education Mess in Oklahoma: Part 1

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2025 //
1

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, listened to a two-part podcast about Oklahoma education by Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic. He reports on what he heard, based on his in-depth knowledge of politics and education in his state.

John Thompson writes:

Introducing her first podcast on Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, the Atlantic’s Hannah Rosin notes the long history of public schools being attacked for cultural and political reasons. Then, she recalls:

What’s been happening to American public schools lately is different: more coordinated, more creative, and blanketing the nation. Pressure on what kids learn and read is coming from national parents’ movements, the White House, the Supreme Court.

Rosin further explains that Ryan Walters “has pushed the line further than most.”

Walters recently announced an ideology test for new teachers moving to Oklahoma from “places like California and New York.” And, although the Oklahoma Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay on Walters’ standards, he’s “tried to overhaul the curriculum, adding dozens of references to Christianity and the Bible and making students ‘identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results.’”

The first of two podcasts review how Walters has “already succeeded in helping create a new template for what public schools can be.” Part two will go even deeper into how “Walters and a larger conservative movement seem to be trying to redefine public schools as only for an approved type.” As he said, “If you’re going to come into our state … don’t come in with these blue-state values.”

Rosin starts with Walters’ “Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism,” and his claim, “For too long in this country, we’ve seen the radical left attack individuals’ religious liberty in our schools. We will not tolerate that in Oklahoma.” He said this in a video sent to school administrators who were supposed to play it for every student and every parent.

This mandate, however, is the opposite of his approach when he was an award-winning “woke” middle school teacher. Rosin interviewed two of Walters students, Shane and Starla, about his “parodies,” that were called, “little roasts.”

Shane, a male conservative, compared Walters’ “little roasts,” such as “Teardrops on My Scantron,” to those of Jimmy Kimmel.  

Starla, a lesbian. said of her teacher, “He was woke! (Laughs.) He was a woke teacher.” And she praised his teaching about the civil rights movement.

Rosin reported that today’s Ryan Walters is “unrecognizable” in comparison to the teacher they knew.  And, “Shane compared it to how you’d feel about your dad if he remarried a woman you didn’t like.”

In 2022 , when running for State Superintendent, pornography was Walters’ issue. He strongly supported HB 1775, which was a de facto ban on Critical Race Theory. It forbid teaching things like, “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Walters’ top target was a high school teacher, Summer Boismier,  who, in response, covered her bookshelves with butcher paper. But she also posted a QR code for a Brooklyn library, which had books that Walters said were pornography.  Boismier resigned, but Walters successfully asked the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke her teaching certificate. He said, “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom. Ms. Boismier’s providing access to banned and pornographic material to students is unacceptable and we must ensure she doesn’t go to another district and do the same thing.”

After being labeled a pedophile, Boismier started to get serious threats. Then the Libs of TikTok started a campaign against alleged gay teachers who were supposedly “groomers,” prompting bomb threats.

Then, as Rosin explained, “state Democrats called for an impeachment probe, and Walters leaned in harder.” For instance, Walters ramped up his campaign against teachers unions who he called a “terrorist organization.”

Walters also claimed that a “civil war” was being fought in our schools.

Rosin reported on how Walters gained a lot of attention “when he said teachers could cover the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, where white Tulsans slaughtered hundreds of Black people, but they should not, quote, ‘say that the skin color determined it.””

Then, “Walters accused the media of twisting his words. He said that “kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”

In 2024, Rosin recalled,  Walters “directed all Oklahoma public schools to teach the Bible. And in an appearance on Fox News, Walters talked about displaying the Ten Commandments.” He claimed, “What we’ve seen in America are the Democrats, the teachers’ unions have driven God out of schools, and Americans, Oklahomans, President Trump want God back in the classroom.”

Trump responded on Truth Social, “Great job by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters on FoxNews [sic] last night. Strong, decisive, and knows his ‘stuff.’” And, “I LOVE OKLAHOMA!”

There was pushback when it was learned that “one of the few Bibles that met Walters’ criteria is the “God Bless the USA Bible.” It was “endorsed by Lee Greenwood and President Trump. It sells for $59.99.”

As the first part of the podcast came to an end, it reviewed Walters’ recent setbacks.

The U.S. Supreme Court  stopped Oklahoma’s plan for  the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has paused the Bible plan. And the special test by Prager U. for teachers from California, New York, and other “woke” states, faces legal challenges.

And Walters was lambasted after sexually explicit images of naked women were seen on a screen inside his office.

Part two will give Walters a chance to tell his side of the story. Rosin previews his response by quoting him: “Yeah, they’re outrageous liars.”

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Oklahoma

MIT’s President Rejects Trump “Compact” to Abandon Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2025 //
9

The U.S. Department of Education invited 9 eminent universities to join a “compact” in which they would adopt Trump priorities in exchange for assurances of future federal funding. Trump priorities include abolishing any efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; assuring that rightwing views are accorded equal time; and agreeing that students would be admitted solely by merit (i.e. test scores). This “compact” means intrusion of the federal government into the internal decision-making of the university.

The first institution to respond was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its president Dr. Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist, wrote this letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, a wrestling entrepreneur:

Regarding the Compact

October 10, 2025

Sally Kornbluth, President

Dear members of the MIT community, 

The U.S. Department of Education recently sent MIT and eight other institutions a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” along with a letter asking that MIT review the document.

From the messages I’ve received, I know this is on the minds of many of you and that you care deeply about the Institute’s mission, its values and each other. I do too. 

After considerable thought and consultation with leaders from across MIT, today I sent the following reply to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. 

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

Dear Madam Secretary,

I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.

I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.

As we discussed, the Institute’s mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:

These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission – work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

As you know, MIT’s record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America’s research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

cc
Ms. May Mailman
Mr. Vincent Haley

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Ethics, Higher Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Kristi Noem Blocks Catholic Priest from Holding Communion for ICE Detainees

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2025 //
11

This is an extraordinary video, showing ICE-DHS employees turning away a Catholic priest who wanted to hold communion for ICE detainees. These are people suffering a cruel fate. Why not allow them the comfort of their religion?

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AamTnq/

Consider that the Supreme Court has been using the freedom of religion guarantee of the First Amendment to tear down the “wall of separation” between church and state and to legalize discrimination against gays.

Why then is is legal or acceptable for ICE to refuse to allow religious freedom to detainees?

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Trump

A Delightful, Wise Post by Greg Olear: “Terence, This is Stupid Stuff”

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2025 //
3

Here is a Sunday special by one of my favorite writers, Greg Olear.

Please open and read to the end. He takes the topic and relates it to the present moment, when many of us fear that our republic is in mortal danger, as fascism swirls around us.

He writes:

Dear Reader,

A Shropshire Lad is a collection of 63 short poems, written in London by a classics scholar who had never once been to Shropshire, involving young men living, working, drinking, wooing, ruing, philosophizing, and dying in the British countryside. The narrator of most of the poems, the titular “lad of Shropshire,” is called Terence, who sometimes is, and sometimes is not, a stand-in for the actual author, A.E. Housman.

The book was published in 1896, when Housman was 37 years old, and did not exactly fly off the shelves. But many of the poems touch on the theme of mortality—particularly, of young men dying before their time—and therefore sales picked up during the Boer War and, especially, the Great War.

A number of the Shropshire poems have been set to music; there are almost 50 different songs that use “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” for lyrics.

Between their simple earnestness, melancholy bent, and wide literary renown, the poems lend themselves well to parody. You can get the gist of the entire collection from a few of the short spoofs. Pre-fascist Ezra Pound wrote a nice one, in 1911:

O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon.
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.

Hugh Kingsmill trod this same ground in 1920:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?

I cannot track down the full text, but “Loveliest of cheese, the Cheddar now,” by the pseudonymous Terence Beersay, made me chortle. Even Dorothy Parker, no comic slouch, took a whack at Housman:

I never see that prettiest thing—
A cherry bough gone white with Spring—
But what I think, “How gay t’would be
To hang me from a flowering tree.”

Housman claimed not to find any of the Shropshire parodies funny, which seems to me unlikely—although, being an academic who devoted most of his intellectual energy to Latin poetical scholarship, he wasn’t exactly Robin Williams with the jokes. From what I can gather, he was something of a fusspot.

But he was able to laugh at himself, or at least to recognize the prevailing darkness of his signature work. The penultimate poem in A Shropshire Lad, “Terence, This is Stupid Stuff,” attacks this head-on—as if Housman knows what the critics would say, and hits them with a preemptive strike. The text is a dialogue between Terence, who writes the depressing poems, and one of his friends, who is forced to read the depressing poems. Housman never tells us where they are when this exchange takes place, but I imagine them sitting at a pub, when, after a few pints of liquid courage, the friend offers some brutally honest criticism:

‘Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ‘tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ‘tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ‘tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

(The bit about the cow is a reference to lyrics of a song popular in Housman’s day, and thus made more sense in 1896. )

His buddy is saying, basically, “Dude, why so pouty? No one wants to read this depressing shit. I know you’re not really this much of a downer, because I see how you knock down the pints of ale. Maybe try writing something upbeat, that we can dance to.”

And Terence replies:

Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Burton-on-Trent is the brewing capital of Britain—like referencing Milwaukee or Latrobe, PA or Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri. The “peers” he refers to next include, according to the footnote at The Housman Society, “Michael Arthur Bass, baron (1886) and Edward Cecil Guiness, baron (1891):”

Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,

And this alliterative couplet, comparing one of the greatest of British poets to beer, is chef’s kiss:

And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.

But for all the magical powers of alcohol to improve our mood, drunkenness does not make the pain go away—not really:

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ‘tis pleasant till ‘tis past:
The mischief is that ‘twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

The world is full of woe and rue, you see, and we are wise to prepare ourselves for the bad stuff that’s coming down the pike, not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Poetry helps accomplish this more effectively than pints of Bass or Guiness:

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day….

In the fall of 2025—which, at the rate we’re going, might also wind up being the fall of the Republic—this strikes me as sound advice. Too many Americans are sleepwalking through the Trump horrors, and while this “antiwokeness” might keep them docile, it will not protect them from what’s coming. The newsfeed, meanwhile, is so toxic that we risk succumbing to its fascist poison. We must make like Mithradates and take it all in small doses….

Do read it all.

Categories Art, Humor, Literature

M.I.T. Rejects Trump “Compact” That Offers Federal Money for Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
13

The Trump administration used a threat to try to cow leading universities to abandon their independence. The administration called their offer a “Compact,” but in reality it was an offer of protection money. The old way of the Mafia: “Pay us and we will make sure no one breaks your windows or vandalizes your store.”

Vimal Patel of The New York Times reported:

M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump administration’s higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

The proposal, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine universities and would require colleges to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would “belittle” conservative ideas.

In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other requirements it demands, including those that would restrict free expression.

“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement that “any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”

“The best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” she added. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and common sense policies.”

The White House has said it wants responses from the universities by Oct. 20. The other eight colleges are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

The compacts have been deeply unpopular among faculty members, who view them as yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to force top universities to adopt its agenda.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Higher Education, Trump

Mike DeGuire: The Big Money Behind the Denver School Board Election

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
5

Veteran educator Mike DeGuire scoured through the public list of campaign contributions to the Denver school board elections.

The pro-charter funders are made up of billionaires, charter school operators, and big-money privatizers.

Among the donors to school board elections are billionaire Philip Anschutz, the richest man in Colorado; he was also a funder of the anti-public school documentary titled “Waiting for Superman,” which claimed falsely that charter schools are the answer to all the problems of public schools.

Other billionaire donors include Netflix founder Reed Hastings and John Arnold, a former trader at Enron.

Then there’s an alphabet series of organizations, some of which use fancy names–the equivalent of Parents for Public Schools– to hide the fact that they are pro-charter.

It’s hard for the average voter to make sense of the election with so many groups endorsing certain candidates.

Tto cut through the hype and propaganda of the charter lobby requires a wise ally.

Mike DeGuire has the experience and wisdom to sort out the charter groups from the true friends of students, teachers and public schools.

And he does it in this article.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Denver, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Privatization

“Trump Country Is Going Broke”

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
10

Patti Vasquez has the story that Trump voters need to hear. Their farms are failing, their property taxes are rising, their schools are closing, their hospitals are going broke…and they need to know why the cost of living is soaring.

She writes:

Tensions are crazy high right now. Many of us are angry at the chaos, the violence, at watching everything we warned about come true. But the way to turn this around isn’t through matching their hate. It’s through relentlessly showing working Americans what’s actually happening.

Every foreclosed farm is a Trump voter who could be reached. Every parent facing a $372 per student education cut is persuadable. Every suburban Republican watching their property taxes explode while their services disappear is a potential ally against authoritarianism.

Democrats- we need to start talking about the bills people can’t pay. Healthcare costs. Housing prices. Grocery bills. School budgets. Property taxes. These aren’t just economic issues – they’re proof that MAGA governance is a scam that hurts the very people who vote for it.

Red states handed Trump his victory. Now they’re getting destroyed by it.

Across Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and Ohio – the heart of MAGA country – cities are slashing services, gutting education, and watching their budgets implode. Fort Worth is scrambling to close a $17 million deficit. Kentucky depends on federal funds for 30% of its budget – funds Trump is cutting. Florida faces a potential $7 billion shortfall while spending $505 million to enforce Trump’s immigration policies.

The leopards are feasting in Trump country. Unfortunately, we’re all on the menu.

Texas delivered Trump his biggest victory margin. Texas is now delivering the biggest budget disasters. Houston officials are calculating how much of their $6.7 billion budget will vanish under Trump’s spending freeze. San Antonio depends on $325.5 million in federal funds that keep low-income families housed. Dallas has the worst taxpayer burden in Texas at $13,000 per person.

“If confusion and chaos were the goal, mission accomplished,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said about Trump’s policies.

These are the suburban Republicans who drive $80,000 F-150 Platinums to HOA meetings in master-planned communities. The ones who post Facebook rants about “welfare queens” while their kids attend publicly-funded schools, drive on federally-funded roads, and drink water from government-maintained systems. They genuinely believed economic devastation was reserved for “those people” in blue cities.

Meanwhile, rural America collapses. Farms bankrupted by tariffs, China refusing to buy American soybeans, rural hospitals shuttering after the “big beautiful bill” gutted their funding. They told themselves they were different. They had real jobs. Good insurance. They were insulated.

While MAGA was outraged by drag queens and library books, Trump quietly withheld $6.8 billion in federal education funds Congress had already approved. After-school programs serving 1.4 million children are shutting down. Trump’s proposed budget cuts Department of Education funding by 15% and eliminates all $1.3 billion for English language learners. In Kentucky – deep Trump country – the highest-poverty schools could lose $372 per student.

These are their kids’ schools. They voted to destroy them because they were mad about pronouns. But math is “woke” now, while inspecting children’s genitals for sports is a legislative priority.

MAGA voters never understood that Red states are “taker states.” They receive far more federal money than they send to Washington. Kentucky is among the top five nationally, receiving 30.1% of its budget from federal funding. That’s $4,850 for every person. Indiana gets 25.7%. Ohio takes 21%. Even Florida depends on the federal government for 32% of its budget.

They mock California and call it a liberal hellscape. The sunshine state sends more to Washington than it gets back. It’s subsidizing them.

The “big beautiful bullshit bill” cuts the federal aid keeping their states alive. Medicaid for rural hospitals, education money for schools, infrastructure funds for roads. They voted to kill the very things keeping them afloat.

State Senator Paul Bettencourt insists cities aren’t “starved” because they can just ask voters to raise taxes. Sure, Paul. The same voters who elected officials promising to eliminate taxes will happily vote to raise them.

Austin is asking voters to approve a 20% property tax increase just to maintain basic services. That’s an extra $303 per year before the real cuts hit. When ACA subsidies expire, health insurance premiums will spike between $360 and $1,860 per person annually. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston are all facing massive tax increases or complete service collapse.

They believed they were voting against taxes. They voted for the biggest property tax increases in history.

While red state cities collapse, Wall Street thrives. JD Vance’s investment fund profits from the economic chaos. When cities sell assets or privatize services, private equity swoops in. When family farms fail, agribusiness giants buy the land at fire-sale prices.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model, Trump’s own “alma mater” – projects his tariffs will reduce GDP by 8% and wages by 7%. A middle-income family faces a $58,000 lifetime loss. That’s not Woke spin, that’s Wharton.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful (Bullshit) Bill” slashes non-defense discretionary spending by $163 billion. It creates $5 trillion in revenue losses while gutting everything from education to infrastructure. The only thing beautiful about it is if you’re a billionaire getting another tax cut.

MAGA voted to “take back our country.” Private equity took their cities instead.

Texas Republicans who spent decades claiming government is the problem are discovering what happens when government can’t afford to function.

But, we all suffer for their choices.

Blue states will bail them out. Again. Our federal tax dollars will flow to states that voted to destroy themselves.

They voted to hurt all of us. For what? Trans athletes? Immigrants picking strawberries? Masks during a pandemic?

But, maybe their pain is our opportunity to show them exactly who did this to them.

Categories Education Reform

Another Russian Tycoon Falls Out of His Window to His Death

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
4

Russia has a recurring mystery: very rich and prominent men keep falling to their deaths, with no explanation. Just recently, the publisher of Pravda suffered the same unfortunate fate.

Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, had been the publisher of Pravda since 1984. It is believed that he jumped from the window of his fifth-floor apartment. Police officials think he had a “nervous breakdown.”

The Times of London reported:

There have been around two dozen mysterious deaths of Russian top businessmen and other officials since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Old Russian Pravda newspaper.

Pravda, which means Truth, was the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991

In July, Roman Starovoit, a transport minister, was found dead in a reported suicide just hours after the Kremlin had announced his dismissal. Police said he shot himself with a handgun. Unconfirmed Russian media reports say that he was under investigation over the theft of at least one billion roubles (£9.3 million), which was allocated for the construction of defences on the border with Ukraine.

Last month, a former Russian state property and customs official who was facing years in prison over corruption charges is said to have killed himself after escaping a courtroom in St Petersburg. Boris Avakyan, who held an Armenian passport, fled to the Armenian consulate and was discovered dead in a lavatory there, police said. 

Also last month, the headless body of Alexey Sinitsyn, a leading Russian business manager, was found under a bridge in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave. A car tow rope was reportedly attached to his body and a police source told Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper, that he may have committed suicide. The source did not clarify how.

Categories Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International
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