The Supreme Court on Monday backed President Donald Trump’s push to allow immigration enforcement officials to continue what critics describe as “roving patrols” in Southern California that lower courts said likely violated the Fourth Amendment.
The court did not offer an explanation for its decision, which came over a sharp dissent from the three liberal justices.
At issue were a series of incidents in which masked and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled aside people who identify as Latino – including some US citizens – around Los Angeles to interrogate them about their immigration status. Lower courts found that ICE likely had not established the “reasonable suspicion” required to justify those stops.
The decision deals with seven counties in Southern California, but it has landed during a broader crackdown on immigration by the Trump administration – and officials are likely to read it as a tacit approval of similar practices elsewhere.
A US District Court in July ordered the Department of Homeland Security to discontinue the practice if the stops were based largely on a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, such as a farm or bus stop. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision, which applied only to seven California counties.
But the Supreme Court disagreed with that approach.
The majority claim to be “originalists” who adhere to the letter of the Constitution and its original meaning.
But they are originalists only when it suits their political goals.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable search and seizure. It reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To stop and search and seize people because they look Hispanic or they are not white is the very definition of “unreasonable search and seizure.”
Shame on the six members of the U.S. Supreme Court who joined this egregiously bad opinion.
Jay Kuo writes a delightful blog called The Status Kuo. He is a lawyer with a sense of humor, and he writes clearly for the public, not for other lawyers.
Trump’s losses in the federal courts continue to pile up, and this week saw a number of critical rulings go against him. Judges from D.C. to Texas to California rejected the Trump regime’s illegal overreach on tariffs, deportations, military law enforcement and even his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Let’s do a legal lightning round to summarize these rulings, any one of which frankly is important enough to have warranted its own stand alone analysis. Today I’ll cover
A major ruling from the Federal Circuit invalidating most of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs;
A long weekend emergency ruling stopping planeloads of unaccompanied children from being deported to Guatemala;
Trump’s big loss after a bench trial in California over his unlawful use of federal troops in that state; and
The Fifth Circuit smackdown of Trump’s invocation of the “Alien Enemies Act” to justify summary deportation of alleged gang members.
Make no mistake: These are big losses that carry major implications for Trump’s plans to isolate the U.S., impose a police state, and conduct mass detentions and deportations.
And if you’re now thinking to yourself, “What does it matter, the Supreme Court will reverse these?” or “Great, but Trump will just disobey the orders,” I want to hit pause and do a reality check. As I’ll explain toward the end of this piece, these arguments, while common and understandable, simply don’t match the facts on the ground….
At this point, Kuo discusses each of the above decisions. You should subscribe to read these analyses.
But these rulings don’t matter! SCOTUS will overrule! Trump will defy!
There’s an understandable tendency to hear about a big court victory for the good guys but then cynically dismiss it, claiming either that the Supreme Court will overturn it, or that the Trump White House will simply ignore the courts’s orders.
I want to encourage readers to not fall into this trap. True, the Supreme Court has intervened in a few cases to lift a few injunctions imposed by lower courts, and that admittedly has been awful to see. But it hasn’t ruled substantively on much of anything yet.
And that has allowed court victories by the good guys to produce some real progress.
For example, the Blue State Attorneys General group has been successful at using lawsuits to claw back huge sums impounded by the White House. This has occurred even while the red states, which failed to challenge the illegal withholdings, were left starved of funds.
In his newsletter today, Robert Hubbell pointed to a chart with data from KFF Health News illustrating how successful lawsuits have spared the blue states from a great deal of the blow to public health infrastructure funding:
This helps show that the Supreme Court hasn’t been able to stop every lawsuit from succeeding. Indeed, many if not most have achieved their goals.
It’s also common to believe that the government is simply refusing to comply with every single court order. This misconception perhaps arose because so much attention was on a pair of lawsuits involving deportations, where the Justice Department and Homeland Security pretty much gave the finger to the courts.
But those are the only instances I’m aware of where court orders have been defied outright. And there are now major consequences for those involved with the plan to show open contempt. Judge Boasberg is now weighing bar disciplinary referrals for the lawyers involved.
In other cases, it is also true that the government has dragged its feet, delayed, deflected, misdirected and sought immediate appellate review of preliminary injunctions. But that is not the same as open defiance. And the courts have gotten much better at holding the government’s feet to the fire, as we just saw with Judge Sooknanan’s order followed by a demand for a series of status updates, all to keep the government on the straight and narrow.
The Department of Justice wants the American public to assume that none of the orders granted by federal judges are being heeded. They want us to believe that they, and not the judiciary, are in control. But this is simply not the case. As we saw this weekend, the Justice Department doesn’t have the appetite for another round of contempt proceedings, and it is even turning planes around when ordered to do so.
Zooming out a bit, we can understand why. The Justice Department is in disarray and demoralized, it has in some instances squandered the crucial “presumption of regularity” that is normally afforded to government functions, and the Trump regime is now losing the lion’s share of the most consequential lower court cases.
Sure, the Supreme Court may eventually weigh in with a set of terrible decisions. But that won’t stop, and hasn’t stopped, resourceful civil rights lawyers from finding new and novel ways to attack the White House’s policies and orders. For example, when SCOTUS found that litigants could not obtain nationwide injunctions against White House directives, plaintiffs adjusted quickly, moving for class certification so that the nationwide part got built into the definition of the class.
And who knows? Maybe even this SCOTUS majority will draw the line somewhere—perhaps by protecting the bright line independence of the Federal Reserve or by telling Trump he can’t order federal troops anywhere he wants for whatever mission he wants.
Until then, every win in the lower courts chips away at the MAGA fascist golem, and maybe with enough blows, we can take the entire monstrosity down.
Diana Lambert of Edsource reported that Jonathan Raymond, the former Superintendent of the Sacramento School District, agreed to take over the leadership of a “troubled” charter school called Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools. The school enrolls adults, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants.
Wow, was it ever troubled!
Good for Raymond for taking on the challenge of fixing the school! The first thing he did was to dismiss the entire board.
The school owes the state $180 million dollars for money it should not have received or misspent. Most of the teachers were unqualified or were hired because they were friends or family of board members.
And on and on, demonstrating the need for the Legislature to establish oversight and accountability for charter schools, which the California Charter Schools Association has opposed for years.
Lambert wrote:
Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools opened in Sacramento in 2014 with high ideals — to help adult students, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants, to earn a diploma, improve English language skills, or learn a trade.
Now, the school is one reason state legislators are considering increased charter school oversight.
Twin Rivers and other organizations did not provide adequate oversight.
Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools received more than $180 million in K-12 funds it was not eligible to collect and must now repay.
Graduation rates were so low they brought down the state’s graduation rate by half a percentage point.
Charter school leaders wasted taxpayer dollars on gifts and trips.
School leaders hired friends and family for jobs they weren’t qualified to hold.
Most teachers did not have the appropriate credentials to teach K-12 classes.
It wasn’t until the California State Auditor’s Office released a report in June, commissioned by state legislators, that the level of impropriety at the school became apparent.
The 80-page state audit found that the adult school received $180 million of K-12 funding for which it was not eligible, assigned teachers to classes they were not credentialed to teach, and avoided standardized testing by eliminating the 11th grade.
The audit also found that school leaders spent $1.96 million on a three-day trip for staff to San Diego for professional development, $80,000 on a leadership conference in Maui, $33,000 a month to lease a semi-professional ballpark, and more than $145,000 on gifts for students.
“The Highlands audit has underscored for us the need for greater accountability on the part of charter authorizers of all sizes, to conduct more thorough oversight that is not solely reliant upon a charter school’s annual audit or a charter school’s assertions,” said Cassie Mancini, legislative advocate for the California School Employees Association at a state Senate hearing on Assembly Bill 84, a charter oversight bill, in July.
Legislators, charter school advocates and charter school authorizers have been working to revise two competing charter school bills with the goal of merging them into one.
Adult charter gets K-12 funds
Many of the problems the audit found at Highlands Community Charter seem to stem from how the school leaders interpreted the rules around a unique federal program that allows adult charter schools, working in partnership with a Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act agency, to receive K-12 funding, which is significantly higher than adult education funding…
Highlands Community Charter had a graduation rate of 2.8% and its California Innovative Career Academy, or CICA, had a rate of 16.9%. Highlands opened CICA, an independent study school, in 2019…
A large number of underqualified teachers and large class sizes, averaging 51 students per teacher, may have contributed to the poor academic performance of the school’s students, according to the audit. The state has no limit on class sizes in charter high schools.
At the time of the audit, only 53 of the school’s 250 teachers had a K-12 credential, said Bill McGuire, who served as executive director of the school during the year of the audit. He blamed the lack of appropriately credentialed teachers on inaccurate information from credentialing officials.
The charter school owes $180 million to the state. It’s asking for some sort of write-off since the money is gone. The authorizer, Twin Rivers, collected $12.9 million in fees but didn’t seem to oversee much.
A scam? An error? A rip-off? Call it what you will. California and every other state needs to establish meaningful oversight and accountability for charter schools. A huge amount of money was spent since the school(s) opened in 2014, and very few people were educated.
I was born in 1967 in Chalmette, Louisiana (St. Bernard Parish), a suburb of New Orleans so close to the city that is is the actual site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
I did not know that my father moved to Chalmette in the mid-1950s as part of the “white flight” from New Orleans.
I did not know why the St. Bernard-Orleans Parish line was so starkly white on the St. Bernard side and black on the Orleans side.
I did not know that the black teachers at my all-white elementary and middle schools were part of an effort for local officials to dodge federal mandates to racially integrate the schools (as in integrating the student body).
(I do remember seeing what I think was one black student in the special education, self-contained classroom of my elementary school– such an unusual, remarkable event that it puzzled my young mind to see him as a student assistant in the cafeteria, and the moment remains clearly in my memory to this day.)
I did not know that when I moved to a more rural section of St. Bernard Parish as I started high school that the African-American residents “down the road” knew full well of the dangers of trying to reside in certain sections of the parish (namely, Chalmette and Arabi).
I did not know that the school-superintendent uncle of one of my favorite teachers tried circa 1961 to create an “annex school” near the Arabi-New Orleans city line in order to enable white parents in the city to avoid racial integration by using school vouchers from New Orleans to enroll their children in an all-white public school just across the parish line.
I did not know that the proliferation of parochial schools in New Orleans was fueled by white flight from the New Orleans public schools.
I did not know that the reason I attended an all-girls public middle- and high school was for local officials to try to sham-integrate the St. Bernard public schools but to keep “those black boys away from our white girls.”
There’s a lot that I did not know and did not begin to learn until I was in my twenties and started asking questions.
But there were a lot of lessons that many white adults in my life tried to instill in me, lessons that indeed needed some serious questioning:
“You know property values will drop if the blacks start moving into a neighborhood.”
“It is better for a white woman to have a physically-abusive white boyfriend or husband than a black one, even if he does treat her well.”
“Interracial marriage is cause for a family disowning a child.”
“The city is a wreck because blacks are lazy and destroy everything.”
As I began reading about New Orleans officials’ cross-generational efforts to obliterate the black middle class in New Orleans (by, for example, by destroying multiple black owned businesses in order to build both the Desire housing project in 1956 and construct Interstate 10 in 1966), I felt like I had been lied to for decades– and my views as a white child and young adult repeatedly manipulated in order to purposely cement in me a sense of white superiority that no amount of personal maturity would ever shake.
Nevertheless, I am happy to say that such twisted, misplaced superiority is indeed and forever shaken in me and shown to be the mammoth lie that it is– the very lie that happens to fuel the white saviors who would impose themselves on black communities– including the center of the community:
The community school.
The community should be the final word on its schools, and when it is, those schools are successful, even in the face of racially-imposed hardship and intentional, multi-generational deprivation of basic resources, including physical space, current textbooks, and even ready supplies of toilet paper.
Such is the story of George Washington Carver High School in New Orleans– a school created as part of a school complex and housing project and build in New Orleans, Louisiana, to intentionally be a segregated school despite its opening post-Brown vs. Board of Education.
In her book, What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans School (2025, Beacon Press), Dr. Kristen Buras offers to readers a detailed history and daily life of G. W. Carver High School in New Orleans, from its inception to its white-savior closure in 2005, post-Katrina, when the state of Louisiana refused to grant the returning Carver community a charter to operate their own school. Buras details what no pro-charter, education reformer discussed at any length as regards traditionally-black New Orleans public schools: the repeated, intentional, multi-generational, systematic fiscal neglect of both the schools and the black community in New Orleans.
In contrast, Buras not only discusses these issues; she brings them to life through her numerous interviews with Carver faculty and staff, a life that begins even before Carver High School opened its doors in the 1958-59 school year.
Right out of the gate, the community served by Carver High School– families residing in the Desire Housing Project– had to face the reality that the project homes were poorly constructed and were starting to fall apart due to a lack of concrete foundations on swampland, no less.
Indeed, the location of what was known as the “Carver Complex” was originally a Maroon colony for escaped African slaves in a backswamp area that 1973 Carver graduate describes as “really not made for residential living.”
Separate was not equal, but to the Carver community, it was theirs, and in the midst of profound racism, the faculty and staff at Carver High devoted themselves to their students and the students’ families, who also happened to be their neighbors.
What speaks loudly to the teacher commitment to Carver High students, as Buras notes, is their multi-decade commitment. Despite being chronically underfunded and under-maintained across its almost-fifty years pre-Katrina, Carver High School had a very low teacher turnover.
In What We Stand to Lose, readers are introduced to the precise and disciplined teachings of music teacher Yvonne Busch, who was known for offering free music lessons during summer break. Former student Leonard Smith produced a documentary about Busch, who retired in 1983 after a 32-years at Carver. We learn of the 38-year career of social studies teacher, Lenora Condoll, who wanted so much for her students to experience the larger world that she organized fundraisers to take her students on Close-Up trips to Washington, DC, and who, on a practical note, showed students that they could make a dressy wardrobe out of a few basic items, including her “black, cashmere skirt.” We meet Enos Hicks, head coach of track and football and athletic director once Carver High opened. By that time, Hicks had been teaching for twenty years already. When Hicks’ students saw “his bag of medals” for track and field, they believed that they, too, could excel and receive their own medals.
These are real teachers whose legacy is undeniable among Carver alumni. They inspired their students to hold their heads high in self-respect despite the cultural pressures and dangers to be pressed into a Whites Only mold of “forever less-than.”
Carver High School was at most 30 minutes from my own high school. I had no idea such quality against the odds was so nearby.
Tom Ultican, retired teacher in California, is a dogged researcher of school privatization. He recently examined the origins of the Oakland Public Education Fund” and found that much of its funding comes from Dark Money.
It’s worthwhile to remember that the public schools of Oakland, California, have been a Petri dish for privatizers and corporate reformers for years. Billionaire philanthropists took control of the district and named its superintendents. The charter sector mushroomed. Superintendents came and went, each one hailed as a savior.
Recently the Oakland Public Education Fund (OPEF) posted, “OUSD Board of Education Renews Long-standing Partnership with The Ed Fund.” OUSD is the Oakland Unified School District and “The Ed Fund” is the latest of many names used to identify OPEF. A quick look at OPEF’s tax forms (TIN: 43-2014630) reveals that they have assets of about $25 million and a yearly income of more than $15 million. The question becomes who is this wealthy group and do their purposes include something more than just good education?
OPEF, formed in 2003 and was originally called “Oakland Autonomous Small Schools Foundation Inc.” EdWeek reported that in 2000 and 2003 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided two grants totaling more than $25 million some of which was designated for small school incubators. It seems likely some of this money was used as seed money to establish OPEF.
The founding executive director of OPEF was Jonathan Klein, a 1997 Yale graduate who became a Teach for America (TFA) fifth grade teacher in the Compton Unified School District. After coming to Oakland in addition to founding OPEF, he went on to become CEO of GO Public Schools, became Bay Area executive director of TFA and chief program officer at the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation. In 2013, he was named Change Agent of the year by New Schools Venture Fund. In other words, he is an education profiteer closely associated with enemies of public schools.
According to the OPEF web-page, the organization relaunched as the Oakland Schools Foundation in 2012 and then relaunched again in 2014 as the Oakland Public Education Fund. Today they refer to themselves as the “The Ed Fund.” In 2016, they put in motion a corporate partnership with Salesforce which provided $2.5 million for middle school computer science and math. This raises concerns that “The Ed Fund” is inappropriately employing wealth to drive public school curriculum using other than democratic means.
Billionaires Finance OPEF
A change in the way data was reported appeared in the OPEF tax forms for 2024. Previously, their reporting on the contributor’s page simply stated “RESTRICTED.” The new report still hides the contributor’s names but provides the amounts given by seven individuals.
In addition to the contributors not listed above, the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation have granted OPEF a total of $785,833 (IN: 65-1202020), the East Bay Community Foundation contributed $557,760 (IN: 94-6070996) and the Silicon Valley Community Fund provided a whopping $8,349,085 (IN: 20-5205488). The Silicon Valley Community Fund is a dark money site where extremely wealthy people can provide money without their name being attached. It is worth noting that the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation has granted the East Bay Community Foundation $6,165,000 since its founding in 2003.
Since 2014, OPEF has averaged giving more than $5 million a year to the Oakland Unified School District for a total of $51,885,477. However, their other spending undermines public education and promotes privatization. Educate78 has received significant support from both the Hastings Fund and the City Fund, known enemies of the public school system. GO Public Schools has been a consistent advocate for expanding the charter school movement. TFA has foisted unqualified teachers with 5 weeks of training on classrooms throughout America. The New Teachers Center is a Bill Gates developed center in Santa Cruz.
Anyone working in a public school knows that charter schools directly compete with and undermine public schools.
Jack White is a superstar rock musician. He had the temerity to criticize Trump’s vulgar gold-plated redecoration of the Oval Office. The White House press spokesman lashed out at Jack White. He responded with no holds barred. He doesn’t get federal funding.
“Jack White is a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” claimed White House spokesman Steven Cheung.
“It’s apparent [White]’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’”
Jack’s response…
Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of government, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake ‘gunshot to the ear’ that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc.
No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the f*cking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults. How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’? Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving! Well here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being.
He’s masquerading as a Christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy. He’s been masquerading as a businessman for decades as nothing he’s involved in has prospered except by using other people’s money to find loophole after loophole and grift after grift.
His staff of professional liar toadies like Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt have been covering up and masking his fascism as patriotism and fomenting hatred and division in this country on a daily basis. And I have ‘ample time on (my) hands’? That orange grifter has spent more tax payer money cheating at golf than helping ANYONE in the country. Improve. Anything. There is no progress with him, only smoke and mirrors and tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.
So MAGA folk, enjoy your concrete paving over of the rose garden, your 200 million dollar ballroom in the White House, and your gaudy ass gold spray painted trinkets from Home Depot, cause he ain’t spending any money on helping YOU unless you fit into his white supremacist country club rich idiot agenda.
Wow, he hates who you hate….good for you, be proud of yourselves, how Christian of you all.
The only way you can support this conman is because you are a victim of the 2 party system and you ‘defend your guy no matter what he does.’ No intelligent person can defend this low life fascist. This bankruptor of casinos. This failed seller of trump steaks, trump vodka, trump water, etc.
This man and his goon squad have failed upwards for decades and have fleeced the American people over and over. This professional golf cheat, this grifter who has hundreds of thousands of deaths from his inaction of the pandemic on his hands, this man that the majority of the country somehow were fooled into supporting and voting into office (through the flawed electoral college) and their love of reality television stars.
Being insulted by the actual White House that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves.
And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.
I was raised to believe that we defeated fascism in World War II and that we would never allow it again in the world. I don’t always state publicly my political opinions, and like anyone I don’t always know all of the facts, but when it comes to this man and this administration I’m not going to be like one of the silent minority of 1930’s Germany. This man is a danger to not just America but the entire world and that’s not an exaggeration, he’s dismantling democracy and endangering the planet on a daily basis, and we. all. know. it.— JW III
Media critic Dan Froomkin wrote the headline above and attached it to a blistering article about major media’s supine knee-bending to Trump. He does outrageous things, and mainstream media treats his power-hungry or unhinged actions as normal. Trump’s actions and pronouncements are not normal. The media should say so.
Froomkin writes:
The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state.
At some point, the evidence becomes overwhelming — and we have reached that point. The frog in the metaphorical pot of water has boiled to death.
Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come. Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack. Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored. Educational institutions are extorted into obedience. Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded. Expertise and science are devalued. Trump speaks of serving an unconstitutional third term. Media organizations are paying tribute to the ruler.
Most significantly, perhaps, there are no guardrails anymore. No one inside the executive branch will tell Trump no. No one in in the ruling party in Congress will tell him no. The right-wing majority of the Supreme Court won’t tell him no.
And our dominant media institutions won’t call him out.
Rather, they obscure reality under a haze of incremental stories, each one presented as if what is going on is fairly normal. As if it’s just politics.
Every outrage is just one more thing Trump has done, rather than the ever-mounting evidence of a corrupt dictatorship.
The coverage is a play-by-play as the burners click upward, rather than a check to see if the frog is still alive, which it is not.
The closest the New York Times newsroom will come to telling readers the truth, for instance, is to say that Trump is “promoting an aura of authoritarian nationalism,” or that certain actions “increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries” behave.
The Washington Post will quote critics accusing Trump of “authoritarian overreach,” and protesters calling him “fascist,” but leaves even the most obvious conclusions to the readers to make themselves.
Outside these newsrooms, the cries of “authoritarian” and “fascist” have been numerous, some dating back to 2016. But now the chorus of voices is growing louder and more mainstream.
The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, itdid happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.….
Everything else from here on out is just a matter of degree and wondering how bad it will get and how far it will go? Do we end up “merely” like Hungary or do we go all the way toward an “American Reich”? So far, after years of studying World War II, I fear that America’s trajectory feels more like Berlin circa 1933 than it does Budapest circa 2015.
We have crossed a line. We are in a place we did not want to be, but we are there. The thing we were all warning about for the last few years is not coming. It is here. We are in it…
We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country. And it sounds melodramatic to say it, I know, but just go with that for a minute, right? Think — think in melodramatic terms. Think in cinematic terms. Imagine the cartoon level caricature of what you think a dictatorship looks like.
I mean, it’s secret police, right? A massive anonymous unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force ….
You would expect, right, that you’d have a scapegoated minority group blamed for all things, in our case, immigrants, right?….
In a cartoon caricature of an authoritarian country, displays of military might are not just for the country’s external enemies. They’re for the country’s own people, right? Because in an authoritarian country, you turn military force inward toward the people of that country.
She had much more to say. It’s worth watching.
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi called it on Sunday, opening his show with a powerful monologue about the collapse of democracy:
Each new abuse is justified as temporary, necessary, even an emergency. Until one day it’s not temporary at all. Until one day the justifications stop altogether because once power is absolute it no longer feels the need to explain itself. At best, each assault may seem like an outlier until the day you wake up and realize the system itself has become unrecognizable. Well that’s where we are — right now. It’s not where we’re headed. It’s where we are
The tragedy of what’s unfolding and the danger of what’s ahead will be compounded if American citizens an masse – all of us – do not recognize this moment for what it is.
The question is when — if ever – our newsroom leaders will reach their tipping point.
For now, they will say that it’s not their job to be the opposition – that’s the job of the opposing party. And therefore, if leading Democrats aren’t calling it authoritarianism, then they certainly won’t.
But that excuse is becoming moot. Top Democrats are in fact becoming increasingly blunt – including the Democratic National Committee chair this morning, at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minneapolis. “This is not politics as usual. This is authoritarianism. It’s fascism dressed in a red tie,” Ken Martin said. He also called Trump the “dictator-in-chief.”
It is past time for our most consequential news organizations to recognize that Trump is leading an authoritarian regime.
The article continues. Open the link to finish it.
We have not forgotten that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised Republican Senator (and medical doctor) Bill Cassidy that he would not impose his past anti-vaccine views on the Departnent of Health and Human Services if he were confirmed. He lied. He fired every member of the Department’s vaccine advisory board and replaced them; some of his choices are decidedly anti-vaccine. He has since restricted access to COVID vaccines.
As Kennedy testifies in front of senators on major vaccine changes at HHS, polls show most Americans support vaccine requirements.
Most U.S. adults — 79% — say parents should be required to have children vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and rubella to attend school, according to a June poll from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
That figure includes 72% of all parents, 90% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans surveyed.
Additionally, 81% of parents across all political backgrounds said they believe public schools should require measles and polio vaccines for students, allowing for some health and religious exceptions, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post poll of parents and guardians of children under 18 years old surveyed in July and August.
What’s more, a Reuters/Ipsos poll from August found that 55% of Americans say the country’s public health is going in the wrong track, with 29% saying it’s going in the right direction.
-ABC News’ Dan Merkle, Oren Oppenheim and Benjamin Siegel
Kennedy claims ‘no cuts to Medicaid’ as millions expected to lose coverage
Kennedy, in an exchange with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, said there are “no cuts to Medicaid” in the sweeping Trump spending cut and tax bill.
“That is absurd,” Warner responded.
The megabill passed by Republicans in Congress in early July includes $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare spending. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the law will result in 10 million Americans losing health insurance over the next decade, with more than 7 million people expected to lose Medicaid coverage.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Warner, Kennedy have heated exchange over COVID deaths
Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, had a heated exchange with Kennedy over how many Americans died from COVID-19.
“Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?” Warner asked.
“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy replied.
“You’re the Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Warner said. “You don’t have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?”
Sen. Mark Warner questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“I don’t think anybody knows, because there was so much chaos coming out of the CDC,” Kennedy continued.
Data on the CDC’s website, which is publicly available, shows that at least 1,231,440 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S. since 2020.
GOP’s Cassidy says, ‘We’re denying people vaccines’
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a longtime physician whose vote was critical in Kennedy’s ascension to HHS secretary, read out emails he received from people who say they’ve had difficulty accessing vaccines. Cassidy submitted the emails to the record.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said as he ended his questioning of Kennedy.
Kennedy responded, “You’re wrong.”
Democratic senator to RFK Jr.: ‘You’re a charlatan’
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell picked up the questioning from Cassidy and continued to scrutinize Kennedy’s stance and actions concerning vaccines.
The Washington senator brought up a chart showing the number of deaths following the introduction of vaccines since the 20th century.
Sen. Maria Cantwell questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“You’re a charlatan. That’s what you are. You’re the ones who conflate chronic disease with the need for vaccines,” she said.
“You are perpetrating hoaxes,” Cantwell later added.
Cassidy expresses concerns over ACIP members’ conflicts of interest
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, whose vote was crucial in confirming Kennedy, expressed concerns over conflicts of interest among new members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
In June, Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own hand-picked members, many of whom have expressed vaccine-skeptic views. “What I am concerned about is that many of those who you’ve nominated for ACIP have received revenue as serving as expert witnesses for plaintiffs, attorneys, suing vaccine makers,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy continued, “Now, one of my colleagues in another setting alleged that you seem more interested in settlements than science. If we put people who are paying witnesses for vaccine, people suing vaccines, that actually seems like a conflict of interest real quickly. Do you agree with that?”
Kennedy disagreed saying it may be a “bias” but not a conflict of interest.
Bennet, Kennedy spar over vaccines
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet grilled Kennedy on his firing of all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, and the panel’s upcoming review of childhood vaccine schedule recommendations later this month.
The exchange turned heated as both men raised their voices.
“I’m asking the questions, Mr. Kennedy, on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership,” Bennet yelled. “That’s what this conversation is about.”
“Senator, they deserve the truth, and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of that agency,” Kennedy responded.
Sen. Michael Bennet questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
RFK Jr. claims COVID pandemic was ‘politicized’
Kennedy claimed the COVID-19 pandemic was “politicized” and that Americans were lied to.
He claimed it was untrue that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent transmission and infection.
Studies of the original vaccine found it to be 90% effective against lab-confirmed, symptomatic infection and 100% effective against moderate and severe disease, according to Yale Medicine.
Kennedy says Susan Monarez lied in her WSJ op-ed detailing ouster
Kennedy said former CDC Director Susan Monarez lied in her op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday morning, in which she detailed the pressure she faced from Kennedy.
Monarez wrote that in that meeting, she was “told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric … It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”
“Did you in fact, do what Director Monarez said you did, which is tell her just go along with vaccine recommendations even if she didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence?” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked Kennedy.
“No, I did not say that to her, and I never had a private meeting with her,” Kennedy said.
“So she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?” the senator asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. says most Americans suffering from chronic disease
Kennedy said that he received latest numbers from the CDC that 76.4% of Americans now have a chronic disease.
“This is stunning … This is a national security issue,” he said. “When my uncle was president, we spent zero on chronic disease. We [have now] spent $1.3 trillion.”
Kennedy claimed this is why peopled needed to be fired at the CDC, saying they “didn’t do their job” to keep Americans healthy.
From Twitter (Republicans Against Trump):
Sen. Bill Cassidy: “Do you agree with me that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?”
RFK Jr: “Absolutely.”
Cassidy: “But you just told Sen. Bennet that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid”
Jess Piper lives in rural Missouri. She taught high school English for 16 years, then quit to run unsuccessfully for the legislature in Missouri. She is executive director of Blue Missouri and runs a weekly podcast called “Dirt Road Democrats.” She is relentless.
She wrote this post while listening to a biography of Mark Twain:
I am currently listening to Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography. The audio version is over 44 hours…Chernow is known for the very long biographies and I love to listen to him while driving across the heartland to speak to rural Democrats.
I spoke to about 130 people in Quincy, IL last Thursday. I drove through Hannibal (Twain’s hometown) on my way to the event, and I had been listening to Chernow’s book for about four hours when I finally arrived at the Machinists Lodge for the Adams County summer cookout.
This was my second time at the Adams County event, and when I arrived, I couldn’t help thinking there’s no way it had been a year since my last visit.
Time marches on, but I didn’t know it would be at such a quick pace.
When I last drove to Quincy, we hadn’t elected the current regime. I was still hopeful that Trump was in the past and we were moving forward. I was sure the country was going to vote for our first woman President because I was constantly in rooms with hundreds of rural Democrats across the country — they were motivated and excited and on the ground doing the work.
We all know how that went.
Adams County Democratic Party Picnic. Quincy, IL. 7/31/25.
When I arrived at the event, there were already several people there, so I decided to change in the back of my car instead of walking in with my bags and hangers and hairspray and makeup. My car has tinted windows, and if I push the front seats all the way up, I have enough room to hide behind the seats and do a quick change.
Superman’s phone booth has nothing on my Mazda.
Before speaking, I sat down to fresh tomatoes and a grilled pork chop and a salad and a piece of chocolate cake. No Diet Coke available, so I was forced to give my body the water I usually avoid.
After the event, a man came up, introduced himself, and said he was at the same event last year as well. He told me something I have been thinking about ever since: he said, “I saw you last year and your message has changed. You were light-hearted last year. You are pointed this year.”
True enough.
Last year, I had hope that we would make progress. This year I hope we won’t devolve into an autocratic police state. I hope I heave healthcare in January after the subsidies dry up. I hope my kids can afford to buy groceries and pay their rent. I hope my grandkids’ schools are funded. I hope my neighbor isn’t deported. I hope concentration camps don’t become a normal experience.
I have hope. I am also paying attention.
I have spoken so often that I almost have an autopilot switch. I rearrange the order at most events so I don’t get stale, and I usually throw in a new story or talking point at each event. I can speak unscripted for about 45 minutes, however, I would never. I am an old teacher, so I watch the audience for cues. I watch to see if I should hit a point even harder or if I should wrap up.
There is nothing as awful as a speaker who has gone on too long. I’d rather be booed than be boring.
Since March or so, I have spoken on the cruelty of ICE and the instances of kidnappings on American streets. I talk about the folks who are disappearing before our eyes. I speak on the ICE “agents” without badges or warrants or marked cars. Thugs covering their faces. Thugs who seem to have unlimited power from a regime who wants to turn the US into a police state.
I speak on my privilege and what people who look like me should do if they encounter their neighbors being kidnapped or harassed…get in the way.
Film the encounter. Ask for badges and warrants. Warn your neighbors if you see ICE. Remind them to not open the door for agents. Narrate your video, focusing on the agents not the detained.
Throw sand in the gears as best you can.
I reflected on my talking points on the drive home the next morning. My sweet host was up with me by 5:45 to let her dogs out and say goodbye and I started the journey home via Highway 36, the Twain bio roaring through my speakers.
A quick stop in Hannibal for a McDonald’s Diet Coke and back to the drive home.
And back to my audiobook. The narrator reminded me of Mark Twain’s newspaper writing in the West. How Twain had used racist rhetoric in both his notebooks and his writings since the beginning, but his attitude was slowly changing after leaving Missouri, a slave state.
Twain is a deeply complex man whose views changed and evolved throughout his life. He was vain and always seeking wealth, but he also fought for the oppressed through humor and satire.
The narrator coming through my speakers told of how offended Twain became at the treatment of Chinese immigrants in California and the constant berating and beating at the hands of both the police and politicians and random men on the streets.
As a reporter in San Francisco, Mark Twain witnessed police standing by while white men attacked a Chinese man for no reason. The narrator told me of Twain’s frustration with police complicity in racial violence perpetrated against Chinese immigrants.
No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or opposes a [Chinese person], under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it – they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently the policeman and politicians likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum…
I like that phrase. I usually call the folks fighting on behalf of the fascists “bootlickers”, but I think Twain’s description may predate the word bootlicker.
Dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum…it seems very appropriate for the ICE agents I have seen and read about in the news.
ICE is getting closer and closer to my home. I just read of a raid in Lenexa, Kansas at a Mexican restaurant. I watched a video of the incident, and I am proud to say that Lenexa community members did in fact get in the way. They stood with their neighbors and tried to protect people in their community.
Rabbi Moti Rieber is the executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, and says the raids happen without rhyme or reason.
“Because anyone who is perceived as Latino or African, wherever they are at a Home Depot, at a court hearing, out gardening, picking up their kids or at a restaurant in suburban Johnson County can be set upon by armed thugs, armed gunmen in masks, dragged into a van and disappeared. My friends, fascism in the form of uncontrolled executive power, lawlessness, political persecutions and racist law enforcement is not coming. It is here.”
The Rabbi is right. It’s not coming. It’s here. And we have to be ready to fight back on behalf of the people who are being persecuted by the police state.
The kidnappings are brazen to induce fear, but we have to act in solidarity and without hesitation. We can’t let this stand.
Twain was right in his summation of the dust-licking scum detaining and harming people for the color of their skin in the 1800s. Rabbi Rieber is correct in his description of ICE agents in the present.
As I travel around the center of the country helping to organize rural Democrats, I need you to know they exist. Rural people are also progressive people. There are people in every space in every state standing up for their neighbors and against thugs and fascism and authoritarianism. Against the racism and the disappearings.
This year, the highly disciplined students from MS 50, a high-poverty school, won the national debate championships, besting teams from private schools and affluent districts.
Students from the MS 50 debate team.
Standing on stage in Des Moines, Iowa, in June at the awards ceremony for the nation’s largest middle school debate tournament, 14-year-old Erick Williams was shocked to hear the announcement coming from the podium.
He turned to his partner, Anedwin Moran, to make sure he hadn’t heard wrong. The two eighth graders from M.S. 50 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, were national champions.
It was the capstone of a remarkable debate journey for Williams, Moran, and M.S. 50, which has a student poverty rate of nearly 90% and a decade ago was on the list of the most troubled schools in the city and at risk of closure. Since then, Principal Ben Honoroff has embraced debate as a way to transform the school’s academic outcomes and reputation. M.S. 50’s debate program has captured multiple citywide titles, inspired local elementary schools in the area to launch their own programs, and brought the first-ever Spanish language debaters to the National Speech and Debate Association’s annual tournament.
But a title at the nation’s most prestigious middle school debate tournament had eluded M.S. 50 — until this year.
For Honoroff, it was validation not just of the hard work and talent of the kids and staff but also of the unique way the school approaches debate.
“It’s a victory for the way we are interpreting policy debate: as a way of having kids be critical about the resolution and invoke their own lived experience,” he said.
In the world of competitive policy debate, students spend long hours outside school poring through dense academic material to craft arguments they often try to cram into tight time limits by speed-talking. The format has historically favored private and affluent public schools with the resources to hire multiple coaches and send students to tutors and debate camps, said Honoroff, a longtime coach.
At M.S. 50, staffers believe students make the best arguments when they believe what they’re saying — and when it draws on their life experience.
“While we might be way behind our competitors in terms of resources … what we have more than them often is lived experiences around issues of equity and justice,” Honoroff said. “When we can teach our kids to leverage that, then they become really powerful debaters.”
That was on display at this year’s competition, where teams had to make a case for or against the resolution that the federal government should increase intellectual property protections. M.S. 50 decided to center its argument on graffiti, a subject many of the students knew first-hand living in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Williamsburg.
They argued that local graffiti artists, who, like the M.S. 50 students, are mostly Black and Latino, are often unfairly targeted by law enforcement, even while their more famous counterparts, like the artist “Banksy,” are celebrated and their work can increase property values in gentrifying areas.
For eighth grader Coco Suzuki, it was an easy argument to make. She personally knows graffiti artists who “have suffered from their art.”
“If it [the argument] has a connection to your life,” said Pryce Sanders, another member of the debate team, “everything just flows better.”
Debate helps a school turn the page
At M.S. 50, debate is woven into almost every aspect of the school.
Every teacher gets training about how to bring “evidence-based argumentation” into their classes. On top of that, about 120 of the school’s nearly 400 students, roughly a third, enroll in a designated debate elective, where they get a mix of reading support and practice debating in public — along with the chance to compete in local tournaments. A select group of eight students meets outside of school and travels to tournaments across the country.
Honoroff credits the focus on debate with helping boost the school’s academic achievement and shoring up declining enrollment, which dipped to a low of under 200 students in 2015.
“If they’re in debate, they’re working on their reading, their writing, their speaking, their listening, their teamwork, their activism,” he said. “We know that they’ll be reading more on one Saturday at a debate tournament than they probably read the whole week.”
Inspiration, advice, and best practices for the classroom — learn from teachers like you.
The activity can be especially beneficial for students who are behind grade level in reading or who are still learning English, a group that makes up about 16% of the school, Honoroff said.
But he knew English language learners were still at a massive disadvantage in competitive tournaments. That’s why M.S. 50 pushed for permission to allow some debaters to compete in Spanish at the national debate tournament — the first time that had happened in the tournament’s nearly 100-year history. M.S. 50 pays for its own interpreters, who translate both the oral arguments and written documents between Spanish and English.
This year, two of the eight members of M.S. 50’s national debate tournament team were Spanish-speaking immigrants who arrived in the country last school year. One of them, Arceny Reynoso, who came from the Dominican Republic, won a speaking award.
“I didn’t expect this prize,” she said in Spanish. At first, she suffered debilitating tremors and shivers when she got up to speak. But this year, judges were impressed by her confidence and forcefulness, said her partner, Briana Paz.
As M.S. 50’s debate program has grown in size and stature, the effects have rippled outward.
Several elementary schools in the area have now launched their own debate programs. Students like Williams and Sanders have been debating since they were in third grade and sought out M.S. 50 specifically for its debate program.
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