Unprecedented: Retired Judges Act to Protect the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
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We live in strange and dangerous times. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, the rule of law itself is under attack. Our Dear Leader has threatened judges who rule against his wishes. He and his lawless administration ignore decisions they don’t like. He installed a Supreme Court majority who were vetted by the far-right Federalist Society. That majority proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite their repeated pledges not to do so, and to gut the Voting Rights Act, terminating guarantees of equal rights for Black Americans.

At this time when the rule of law itself is disregarded by the President, who is himself ruled only by whim and self-aggrandizement, two retired judges expressed their concern in The Guardian.

Judge Michael P. Connelly and Judge Robert F. Orr wrote:

Last October, US lawyers, judges and rule-of-law advocates traveled to Warsaw as guests of the Carter Center. Neither of us was among them. But when our colleagues returned, their stories inspired us.

They told us about judges and lawyers across central Europe who had been surveilled, smeared, prosecuted and sometimes jailed for standing between political power and courts meant to remain independent.

And they kept going.

Poland’s example was especially compelling. When its government sought greater control over the judiciary, Polish judges put on their robes and marched through Warsaw. Judges from across Europe joined them in what became the March of 1,000 Robes.

Then they left their courthouses and traveled through towns and villages, explaining what an independent judiciary means to a farmer, shopkeeper, parent or business owner. They talked about law not as an abstraction, but as protection against arbitrary power.

They understood a truth Americans can no longer overlook: judicial independence cannot survive merely because judges believe in it. The public must understand why it matters.

That lesson brought us on to a bus.

Last month, shortly after the United States celebrated its 250th birthday, the Justice in Motion tour traveled from western Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Thirty sitting and retired judges, lawyers and advocates handed out pocket constitutions, met students and asked a question Americans do not consider often enough: what does the rule of law mean in everyday life, and what happens when we take it for granted?

In Columbus, we did something neither of us imagined during our years on the bench. We put on our robes and marched from the federal courthouse toward the supreme court of Ohio, carrying purple flowers, an international symbol of judicial independence.

American judges do not ordinarily march in the streets. Nor should they. The judiciary derives much of its legitimacy from restraint. Judges do not campaign for particular outcomes or answer criticism with press conferences. They speak through their decisions. But these are no ordinary times.

And our Polish colleagues taught us that silence can carry its own risk.

Our march was not about Democrats or Republicans, nor about defending particular judges or decisions. It was about defending the system that allows legal disagreements to be resolved according to law rather than political power.

One of us was elected to the supreme court of Ohio as a Democrat. The other was elected to the supreme court of North Carolina as a Republican and is now an independent. Through two long careers, we have disagreed about plenty.

That is precisely the point.

The rule of law is not a partisan possession.

Both sides enter a courtroom with the right to be heard. Judges must apply the law to the facts without regard to which party is more powerful, popular or politically useful.

Sometimes judges get it wrong. That is why we have appellate courts. Sometimes courts issue decisions that elected officials or citizens strongly dislike. That is unavoidable in a constitutional democracy.

The answer is appeal, legislation where constitutionally permissible, or constitutional amendment. It cannot be intimidation, retaliation for unpopular rulings or the suggestion that compliance with lawful court orders is optional.

Once adherence to judicial decisions depends upon whether the politically powerful agree with them, we have left the rule of law behind.

In Wooster, Ohio, about 150 people gathered across from the historic courthouse. The discussion was not about red America or blue America. It was about ordinary life.

The rule of law is why you can deposit money in a bank and expect it to be there tomorrow. It is why contracts mean something, property can be protected and an individual citizen can enter a courthouse and challenge the government.

These protections seem ordinary only because generations before us built institutions strong enough to make them ordinary. When the rule of law works, it is almost invisible.

Judges are trained – rightly – to exercise restraint. During our years on the bench, we spoke through our rulings. That tradition is essential to maintaining confidence in an impartial judiciary.

But restraint should not be confused with silence about the survival of the institution itself.

When judges are threatened because of their rulings; when an adverse decision is answered not with an appeal but with demands for retaliation; when courts are judged legitimate only when they produce politically desired outcomes, those who understand the system have an obligation to explain what is being lost.

Our Polish friends understood this before we did. Their circumstances differ from ours, and comparisons should be made carefully. But the lesson travels well.

The rule of law does not defend itself. Neither does an independent judiciary. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless citizens and public officials possess the courage and habits necessary to honor them.

Four days on a bus will not persuade a nation. The purpose was more modest: to begin conversations, one community and one citizen at a time, about institutions Americans have been fortunate enough to take for granted.

That work belongs not only to judges and lawyers, but to all of us.

The rule of law is not something judges possess. It is something citizens inherit.

And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.

What’s giving us hope now

Justice Robert F Orr (retired): What gives me hope is the scope of individuals and groups now focusing and talking about the rule of law and the independence of our judiciary. Our bus trip had a great mix of backgrounds and experience both in the judges participating and meeting us at stops as well as the young people who amplified the message across various media platforms. It’s genuinely a national movement.

Justice Michael P Donnelly (retired): What gives me hope is the genuine appreciation we encountered during the bus tour for the role of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights and civil liberties. The people we met understood that these freedoms, defended at great sacrifice throughout our history, cannot be taken for granted – and that each generation must be willing to stand up for them.

  • Michael P Donnelly is a retired justice of the supreme court of Ohio
  • Robert F Orr is a retired justice of the supreme court of North Carolina. Both participated in the Justice in Motion tour organized by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Justice, Trump

Benjamin R. Cremer: A Christian Case for Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
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Benjamin Cremer was raised in a strict fundamentalist home in Idaho and home-schooled. He became an Evangelical Christian minister. Several years ago, he began to question his church and eventually was expelled. He is now affiliated with the Wesleyans and keeps asking hard questions.

He wrote:

On June 26th, the Trump Administration’s Religious Liberty Commission released a draft report calling for a reexamination of the traditional understanding of separation between church and state. The report argues that religion and government should be viewed as partners rather than distinct institutions and recommends expanding the role of religious expression within public life and government institutions. Supporters see these proposals as necessary protections for religious freedom.

Others, however, have expressed serious concerns. They warn that when government begins treating religion as an essential partner rather than maintaining neutrality among faiths, the rights of religious minorities, dissenting Christians, and nonreligious citizens become more vulnerable. History repeatedly demonstrates that when governments become closely aligned with a dominant religious tradition, those outside that tradition often find their freedoms diminished.

From a Christian perspective, this concern should not be dismissed lightly. The church has often suffered most when political power became intertwined with religious authority. The same New Testament that calls believers to proclaim Christ boldly also presents a church that transformed the world without controlling the state. The earliest Christians did not seek privileged status within the Roman Empire. They sought faithfulness to Jesus.

For this reason, many Christians continue to defend the separation of church and state not because they want less Christianity in society, but because they want the church to remain free from political control and governments to remain free from religious domination. They recognize that religious liberty is strongest when government protects the freedom of all faiths rather than privileging one faith over others.

The Historical Problem

Few ideas are more misunderstood in modern American politics than the separation of church and state. Many people hear the phrase and assume it means separating God from public life, silencing religious voices, or forcing faith into the private sphere. Historically, however, the principle emerged largely because Christians had experienced the dangers of governments controlling religion and religions controlling governments.

The separation of church and state is not an attack on Christianity. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest protections Christianity has ever received.

For most of history, governments and religions were deeply intertwined. In ancient Egypt, rulers were often considered divine. In the Roman Empire, religious devotion and political loyalty were fused together. Citizens honored the gods not merely as a matter of personal belief but as an act of civic responsibility. Religious conformity was seen as essential to social stability and national prosperity. 

The earliest Christians lived within this system. Their refusal to participate in emperor worship and sacrifices to the Roman gods was viewed as dangerous. They were often accused of undermining the social order because they would not give ultimate allegiance to the empire’s religious expectations. The church began as a minority movement that understood firsthand the dangers of state-controlled religion.

Ironically, after Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, many Christians began wielding the very power that had once been used against them. Over the centuries, state churches often persecuted dissenters, imprisoned religious minorities, punished heresy through civil law, and sometimes used violence to enforce theological conformity.

Catholics persecuted Protestants. Protestants persecuted Catholics. Both often persecuted smaller Christian groups such as Anabaptists, who were the most persecuted set of Christians during both the Protestant reformation and Catholic counter reformation. The result was centuries of religious conflict throughout Europe.

One of the most devastating examples was the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict fueled in part by religious and political rivalries that killed millions and left large portions of Central Europe devastated.

The lesson became increasingly clear that when governments gain authority over religion, faith becomes vulnerable to political manipulation. When churches gain governmental power, the temptation to coerce rather than persuade becomes difficult to resist.

The American Experiment

The founders of the United States were deeply aware of this history. Although many founders held religious beliefs themselves, they also understood the dangers of establishing a national church.

The First Amendment begins with two related protections: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These two principles work together. The government may not establish or favor a particular religion. At the same time, the government may not interfere with citizens freely practicing their faith. This arrangement was not designed to weaken religion. It was designed to protect it.

Many of the strongest advocates for religious liberty were Christians themselves. One of the most important was Roger Williams, a Baptist minister who argued that government involvement in religion corrupts both institutions. He famously described a “wall of separation” that protected the church from the state as much as it protected the state from the church. For Williams, faith must be freely chosen. Genuine belief cannot be compelled by political power.

The New Testament Perspective

The New Testament offers remarkable support for this principle.

Jesus consistently resisted attempts to merge God’s kingdom with political domination. When crowds wanted to make him king by force, he withdrew. When questioned about Roman taxes, he responded, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Before Pontius Pilate, Jesus declared that his kingdom was “not from this world.”

Probably the most remarkable example is Jesus refusing the temptation from Satan to have power over all the kingdoms of the world, which would have been the entire Roman Empire at the time. Jesus refused because he didn’t come to seek power over others for himself, which is how earthly empires operate. He came to bring and share the power of God with the world. 

This did not mean that Jesus was unconcerned with public life. His teachings had profound social and political implications. Rather, it meant that God’s kingdom advances through witness, service, truth, sacrifice, and love, not through coercion and control. The earliest Christians transformed the world without controlling the state. They cared for the poor. They welcomed strangers. They rescued abandoned infants. They crossed ethnic and social boundaries. They proclaimed Christ as Lord. They did all of this while possessing little political power. Their influence came through faithful witness, not governmental authority.

Why This Matters Today

The separation of church and state remains essential because the temptation that confronted Christians throughout history still exists.

Whenever Christianity becomes closely tied to political power, faith risks becoming a tool for preserving social status, cultural dominance, or national identity. That is exactly what we are seeing today. Christian Nationalism has accepted the temptation that Jesus rejected, to have power over the kingdoms of this world. 

A Neo-evangelical sect of Christianity that runs the Heritage Foundation, is seeking to inject its own brand of Christianity over everyone else in our nation, even over other kinds of Christians. It is seeking to not only define what is truly “American” but what is truly “Christian.” This will inevitably lead to the erosion of of both civil and religious liberties. This also opens the door for other religious groups to control high positions of power in the future. However, my hunch is the Heritage Foundation and company don’t plan on releasing the controls any time soon, so they aren’t worried about another religious group gaining power over them.

When the church fuses itself with the nationstate, it begins to ask different questions. Instead of asking, “Are we being faithful to Jesus?” It asks, “Are we winning?”

Instead of asking, “How do we love our neighbors?” It asks, “How do we maintain control?”

Instead of measuring success by loving God and our neighbors as ourselves, it measures success by influence.

History repeatedly demonstrates that when Christianity becomes fused with state power, the result is often harmful both to the church and to society. The church becomes less prophetic because it becomes invested in protecting power.

The state becomes less just because it begins favoring particular religious groups over others. Both institutions are weakened.

Separation Is Not Silence

Defending the separation of church and state does not require Christians to withdraw from public life. Christians should vote. Christians should advocate for justice. Christians should speak about moral issues. Christians should serve in public office. Christians should bring their convictions into public conversations.

The principle simply means that government should not establish, privilege, enforce, or coerce religious belief. Faith flourishes best when it is freely embraced rather than politically imposed.

A Christian Defense

Ultimately, the separation of church and state is not rooted in hostility toward Christianity. It is rooted in humility.

It recognizes that the church is at its best when it relies on the power of the Spirit rather than the power of the sword. It recognizes that authentic faith cannot be manufactured through legislation. It recognizes that governments make poor churches and churches make poor governments.

Most importantly, it recognizes that Jesus never instructed his followers to seize political power in order to build the Kingdom of God. He instructed them to take up their cross, love their neighbors, serve the vulnerable, tell the truth, and follow him. The church’s greatest strength has never been its proximity to power.

Its greatest strength has always been its faithfulness to Christ.

Now I’d like to hear from you!

Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

Taxpayers Foot the Medical Bills for Low-Wage Employees of Walmart, Amazon

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
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Judd Legum at Popular Information excels at exposing scandals, many of which are in plain view. In this post, he reveals what many people have long suspected: About 10% of the employees at Walmart and Amazon qualify for public subsidies for Medicaid because they are so poorly paid. Meanwhile, the owners of Walmart and Amazon are multi-billionaires. Why don’t they pay wages that are enough to keep their employees off public subsidies?

Judd writes:

American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the largest and most profitable companies in the country — collectively generating $100 billion in profits in 2025 — but many of their employees still qualify for Medicaid because their take-home pay hovers around (or below) the poverty line.

As taxpayers keep their workers afloat, the wealth of the two companies’ largest shareholders is increasing exponentially. The Walton family, the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their collective wealth increase from $238 billion in 2021 to $513 billion at the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his net worth increase from $187 billion to $255 billion over roughly the same time period.

Popular Information calculated the public subsidy to Amazon and Walmart by cross-referencing several publicly available data sources. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. This provided state-level Medicaid enrollment for Amazon and Walmart workers in all six states, with the exception of Amazon in Maine.

Popular Information compared these figures to the total number of employees working for Walmart and Amazon in each state, sourced from company disclosures, to establish an average Medicaid enrollment rate for each company. The average Medicaid enrollment rate was then used to establish an estimated Medicaid enrollment for employees of each company in the remaining states.

Finally, the estimated number of employees receiving Medicaid in each state was multiplied by that state’s average annual cost of a non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid enrollee, as published by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).

Using this methodology, Popular Information estimates that, nationwide, over 156,000 Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicaid at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $1.04 billion.

This figure significantly understates the true cost of Medicaid for Walmart employees to taxpayers. First, the calculation only includes the direct cost of Medicaid for the employees themselves. But Walmart’s low wages for these employees also makes their families eligible for Medicaid. Taking into account dependents, the cost to taxpayers would roughly double. Further, the most recent data on Medicaid cost per enrollee from MACPAC is from fiscal year 2023. Costs for 2025 and 2026 are likely significantly higher.

In Walmart’s 2026 fiscal year, then-CEO Doug McMillon was paid over $29.2 million in total compensation while the median Walmart worker earned $30,520 — a ratio of 958 to 1. The earnings of an average worker put them well below the cutoff for Medicaid eligibility for a family of three.

For Amazon, the same methodology finds that an estimated 123,000 Amazon employees are enrolled in Medicaid at a cost to taxpayers of $927 million.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was given a massive compensation package of $212 million in 2021, mostly in stock that vests over 10 years. Jassy’s compensation has been smaller since; he was paid another $2.1 million in 2024. Meanwhile, the median Amazon employee earned $40,206 that year. This global number includes the many higher-paid technical employees who work at Amazon. Warehouse workers in the United States, and others in blue collar positions, make much less, making them eligible for Medicaid.

“Amazon is one of the largest job creators in the country, so looking at raw numbers instead of percentages is misleading,” an Amazon spokesman said in response to Popular Information’s request for comment. “Also, eligibility for both SNAP and Medicaid is based on total household income and family size, not individual wages or benefits – so employers that offer part-time options for those who want them, like we do, are likely to have more people who are eligible.”

While Walmart ranked first in terms of “raw numbers” of employees on Medicaid, Amazon had a higher percentage of its workforce on Medicaid (11.7%) than Walmart (9.4%).

Not everyone who works parttime does so by choice. In June 2026, 4.7 million “individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, according to the GAO, 66.1% of employed individuals on Medicaid work full-time.

Walmart declined to comment on the record. According to the company’s corporate website, starting wages at Walmart have increased by 93% since 2015.

Categories Billionaires, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Health, Medicine

Robert Kuttner: Republicans Cave to Trump Again

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
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Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect is disgusted by the capitulation of Senators Cornyn and Tillis on their vote for Todd Blanche. The two held out until Blanche gave them a signed piece of paper that is utterly meaningless.

There are many reasons to oppose Blanche: he has utterly politicized the Department of Justice, making it totally subservient to Trump. He has continued to act as Trump’s personal lawyer, not as the nation’s chief defender of the rule of law.

Blanche was ordered by Congress last December to release all the Epstein files. He released about half of them, heavily redacted to protect the names of the predators. He has conspired with Trump to free the Insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. He reacted to Trump’s absurd lawsuit seeking $10 billion from the Treasury Department by signing off on a $1.776 billion fund for Trump’s allies, friends, and insurrectionists. More consequentially, he signed an agreement with Trump in which he pledged that Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and various Trump friends would not be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Since Trump owes the IRS about $100 million, this is a sweetheart deal for him.

Trump collected over $2.2 billion in income in 2025, but his avarice is never satisfied.

Kuttner writes about the collapse of opposition by Senators Cornyn and Tillis.

Blanche’s nomination will be voted in by the Senate next Tuesday. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she will vote no; her Senate race in a blue state needs a boost. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she will vote. It takes only two votes to sink Blanche.

The problem is that Trump will find someone even worse!

Kuttner writes:

Over the weekend, it looked as if President Trump had backed himself into a corner in his efforts to get Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was recently primaried by Trump ally Ken Paxton yet remains a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the rest of the year, wasn’t budging in his insistence that Blanche commit in writing to killing the corrupt deal in which the government set up a $1.776 billion slush fund to compensate supposed victims of government violence and Trump personally got immunity from IRS audits.

Trump himself poured oil on the flames in a series of comments and social media posts in which he walked back his previous commitment to end the slush fund and further insulted Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was following Cornyn’s lead.

Tillis, who had previously signaled his support for Blanche, then posted a withering comment on X: “Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks …”

The two holdout senators had little to lose. Both are leaving Congress this year. Both were dispatched in part by Trump’s hostility. Trump made clear that he would not support Tillis’s re-election, so Tillis decided to retire. Trump explicitly endorsed Cornyn’s challenger, despite Cornyn’s decade-long record of dogged loyalty to Trumpism.

So quite apart from principled objections to the deal, there is little love lost between the two lame-duck senators and Trump. But then, Sunday night, the waves parted. After extended conversations with Blanche, Cornyn agreed to support his nomination. And the details of the deal reeked.

Though Blanche posted on social media a signed memo formally rescinding the order that created the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” he left most of the IRS deal intact. Trump still gets full immunity from IRS audits of past tax returns, and the scope of the immunity is narrowed to protect “only” Trump, the Trump Organization, and two of his sons. And once Blanche is confirmed, some version of the slush fund could be resurrected at any time.

Somehow, disgracefully, this satisfied Cornyn and Tillis. It’s far from clear, however, that it will satisfy U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams. Back in May, Judge Williams voided an earlier version of the IRS deal. In a scathing ruling on July 13, she threatened a formal ethics complaint against Blanche for conflicts of interest and misrepresentations. “In sum,” she wrote, “the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail.”

The Judiciary Committee has now scheduled a vote Tuesday to advance Blanche’s nomination to the Senate floor. But this isn’t quite over.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Will a Fascist, Racist, Anti-Semite Win a Major Election in Texas?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
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Bo French is an uber-bigot who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Don’t be misled by the title. The Railroad Commission has very little to do with railroads. It oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas and wields enormous power over an essential industry.

You might want to learn about Bo French, because he is running for an important statewide seat. Also because he voices the sentiments of the dark underbelly of American political life.

The Texas Monthly reports on the ascent of a native fascist:

Last week Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Railroad Commission of Texas, sent out a bizarre fundraising email. Framed as a reminder of the 108th anniversary of the Communist overthrow of Russia, the email included an AI-generated image of his Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, smiling in the chambers where the country’s then-ruling Romanov family was executed in 1918. Rosenthal, French’s campaign continued, has “much in common with the Marxist revolutionaries who brutally executed” the Romanovs, and has plans for his own “infernal revolution” of Texas. “My opponent has spent his time in office mocking Christianity, the Virgin Birth, and Christian Communion, while voting against religious liberty and for the spread of Islam,” the email continued. 

If you’re wondering what, exactly, a century-old Russian coup has to do with the railroad commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, then you’re likely not alone. But among a small audience—those attuned to white supremacist dog whistles—the accusation almost certainly perked up some ears. 

You see, Rosenthal is Jewish. And while French did not explicitly name the Bolshevik revolutionaries who overthrew Russia a century ago, the email appears to be nodding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims there is a Jewish Communist cabal intent on controlling the world and stamping out Christianity. Known as Judeo-Bolshevism, the theory was crucial to Adolf Hitler’s rise and a key justification for the Holocaust. It remains central to the worldviews of many modern fascists, who maintain that communism—and, by extension, immigration—are tools used by Jews to destroy the West and white people.  

In a statement to Texas Monthly, Rosenthal called French’s post “true to form.” The Texas House member from the Houston area and longtime mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry continued: “While I’m working on substantive solutions for the people of Texas and our energy grid, his whole campaign is about pejorative and racist attacks.” 

Neither French nor his campaign responded this week to numerous requests for an interview, or to clarify whether he intended to invoke the conspiracy theory. But his other recent posts make clear he has a deep familiarity with esoteric racist views that were once largely confined to fringe corners of the far right. 

This week, in response to a video that purported to show nonwhite people trespassing in a restricted part of Yellowstone National Park, French posted a quote from “The Camp of the Saints”—an obscure French dystopian novel that depicts immigrants as diseased, feces-eating hordes and has enjoyed a recent resurgence among the global white nationalist movement. “Your universe has no meaning to them,” French wrote on X to his 80,000 followers, without revealing the source of the quote. “They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door . . .”

Citing fears of “gay race communism,” an impending “massacre of heritage Americans,” and the nation ending up like modern South Africa, French has called for the United States to “be Rhodesia,” the African pseudostate in the sixties and seventies in which Black people were violently oppressed by a ruling white minority. Rhodesia has inspired numerous racist killers—most infamously Dylann Roof, the self-described “Last Rhodesian” who massacred nine Black congregants at a South Carolina church in 2015.

“We are all Rhodesians now,” French wrote in January. 

It wasn’t long ago that such views were largely relegated to the online backwater of the neo-Nazi movement or manifestos left by fascist mass shooters, according to Wendy Via, a veteran researcher of the far right and cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They are well-known to people who study extremism,” Via told me. “But they’re not well-known to even your average racist. These are the ideological basis for the white supremacist movement.” 

Even if they’re not yet widely accepted, she said, such views are slowly being normalized by President Donald Trump, the scaling back of moderation on many social media websites, and the proliferation of the “great replacement” theory—which claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to demographically replace white people in Western countries. In May, for instance, Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander-at-large under Trump, spoke to a global conference of neo-Nazi-affiliated activists and extreme far-right political figures who had gathered in support of the “remigration” movement, which seeks to forcibly remove people of color, including legal citizens, from their countries. (Detractors have another name for such efforts: “ethnic cleansing.”) 

In Texas, French has been a key purveyor of similarly extreme rhetoric, and he helped make anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry mainstream in the broader state GOP. He’s called for 100 million people—nearly a third of the American population—to be deported, and for two nonwhite Texas House members to be stripped of their citizenship and removed from the country. He wants some Native Americans—“third world savages”—to be kicked out of America too. French says Texas needs to “ban Islam” and “round upevery Muslim” for deportation. Last week he toldhis followers it was “time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!” McCarthyism and the Christian Crusades, he argues, didn’t go far enough. And this week he referred to America’s “not in labor force” population—an economic term for nonworkers that includes retirees, students, and those with serious handicaps—as “low IQ parasites.” 

Categories Texas, Bigotry, Racism, Evil, Fascism, Elections, Extremism

Vasquez-Heilig: Real Republicans Don’t Impose Their Views on Others

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
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I remember, a time long ago, when Republicans believed in small government. Except for public health, they believed in allowing localities and states to make their own decisions.

Trump Republicans, however, believe in imposing their beliefs on everyone else . They use the power of the federal government to enforce their views.

We have seen this with the executive orders that Trump has signed, making programs in “diversity,equity, and inclusion” a reason to defund research grants at institutions of higher education. I can’t imagine President Eisenhower or President Bush (either of them) wielding that stick. And I haven’t forgotten that President Nixon initiated affirmative action, which the Trump administration considers illegal and “racist.”

Similarly, we have seen the Trump administration demanding tribute from law firms, major media, and universities, in exchange for freedom from federal harassment. It vigorously fought the right of women to control their own bodies. It demanded that transgender members of the military be fired, without regard to their years of service or commendations from superior officers.

Julian Vasquez examines the latest Trump administration effort to coerce universities to accept the Trump agenda.

He writes:

When the Trump administration issued its February 2025 Dear Colleague letter attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion in education, I responded nationally on Democracy Now! I warned that higher education had not faced political interference this serious since McCarthyism and asked whether universities would “surrender or resist.”

That Dear Colleague letter went down in flames. Federal courts blocked the directive, finding serious constitutional and procedural problems. In August 2025, a federal court vacated both the letter and its associated certification requirement. The administration eventually abandoned its appeal. Now the Trump administration is trying again.

On August 3, 2026, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” It calls on every college and university to publish a statement by the end of 2026 explaining how it will address admissions, faculty hiring, academic viewpoints, grading, artificial intelligence, foreign influence, research, affordability, and national priorities.

This letter is more carefully written than its failed Dear Colleague predecessor. It does not explicitly threaten universities with the loss of federal funding. It presents itself as an invitation to restore public trust and even acknowledges that there is “no single template for academic excellence.”

But universities should recognize the pattern. When the courts stop one attempt at political control, the administration repackages the same objective and returns through another channel. Expect more legal battles. If the administration tries to transform this ostensibly voluntary letter into funding conditions, investigations, accreditation pressure, or binding institutional obligations, expect it to lose again.

Red States Will Likely Embrace the Letter

In Republican-controlled states, many governing boards and university presidents will likely treat McMahon’s letter as federal permission to intensify attacks on faculty work, tenure, diversity programs, student expression, and academic freedom.

The letter gives presidents and boards a ready-made list of questions. Are academic departments sufficiently “pluralistic”? Are faculty hiring and evaluation practices considering the “right” perspectives? Is research sufficiently aligned with the “national interest”? Are universities placing American priorities ahead of global commitments? These questions sound reasonable until politicians begin supplying the answers.

A board, president, provost, or dean that wants to target a professor, academic department, research center, or student organization can now point to the secretary of education and claim that Washington has demanded action. The letter could become a pretext for investigations, curriculum reviews, program closures, hiring interference, and ideological screening. It does not create those powers. But it may embolden political officials to exercise powers they do not legally possess.

In blue states, many university presidents and boards will probably roll their eyes. They will recognize the document as political theater written by officials with limited understanding of university teaching, research, and shared governance. But they cannot safely dismiss it. The Trump administration has already demonstrated its willingness to use federal funding to reward allies and punish perceived opponents.

Political Retaliation Is Not Hypothetical

The administration acknowledged in court that it canceled approximately $7.6 billion in grants based on whether the affected states voted for Donald Trump in 2024. The canceled projects were concentrated in 16 states that supported Kamala Harris. A federal judge concluded that the politically selective cancellations violated constitutional equal-protection requirements. The Associated Press reported on the ruling.

That episode should concern every university president. If an administration will cancel billions of dollars in congressionally authorized grants based on how a state voted, universities must consider whether this new letter identifies the new political tests that could later determine which institutions receive grants, face investigations, or become targets of federal enforcement.

This is more of the same. Political loyalty is being substituted for neutral governance for all. Red-state institutions may be rewarded for adopting the administration’s agenda. Blue-state institutions may be punished for resisting it. In both cases, federal power becomes an illegal tool for encouraging political conformity.

Please open the link, which shows that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon may well be the least qualified person to serve as Secretary of Education.

Yet, here they are, Trump and McMahon, trying to use their political leverage to reshape higher education.

They are not Republicans. They are not libertarians. They are authoritarians.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Extremism, Higher Education, Trump

Was the “Mississippi Miracle” a Short-Time Surge?

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
20

John Thompson, writing from Oklahoma, reviews the research on the “Mississippi Miracle,” the strategies that boosted fourth-grade test scores? Those strategies are now being turned into law in states across the country. John takes another look.

He writes:

When the so-called “Mississippi Miracle” and the “Science of Reading,” became the drivers of the Oklahoma Strong Readers Act, I pointed out the large body of research-based evidence that its advocates ignored. Yes, there was evidence that the so-called “Marathon” could raise 4th grade test scores, at least in the short-term, but there was little or no evidence that it would do more good than harm. Negative results were even more likely in Oklahoma where our rightwing politics and our minimal amount of funding would drive the experiment.

I also asked experts and journalists about policies that common sense would say violate the norms of social science research. For instance, NAEP tests have been designed to minimize the use of test prep to jack up scores.  And, yes, I was told that there are people looking into that issue.

Being a former academic historian, I would read the way that reformers like Adam Tyner and Rachel Canter track NAEP scores. However, I was dismayed by their interpretations of those patterns. After all, whether laws were passed in 2002 or 2013, those mandates didn’t take effect immediately. If we want to learn what policies worked in what places, we need to identify what was actually happening in schools before we can figure out whether those approaches worked.

And that leads me to “NEPC Review: Inside the Mississippi Marathon” by, Gregory Camilli, Professor Emeritus from Rutgers University. Camilli was extremely precise and diplomatic, when reviewing the Progressive Policy Institute’s, “Inside the Mississippi Marathon,” written by Rachel Canter. He explained that it presents an “insider account of how the K–3 education system in Mississippi evolved over roughly two decades.” But, he “focuses on just a slice of the report: its description of the state’s performance in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and, to a lesser degree, the policy implementation.”

Camilli reports that Mississippi’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) was passed in 2013, but “full implementation of the various pillars of the LBPA arguably took place in 2017-2019.”

Then he notes that “the PPI report also presents no research literature on [the] effectiveness of the LBPA,” and “it is not presented or intended as a research study.”

The LBPA prioritized the lowest-performing schools. By 2015-16, full literacy support was given to 18% of approximately 700 elementary schools. 

These “designated schools,” were assigned a literacy coach (hired, trained, and monitored by the state)” who modeled and observed instruction. They also received a “reading curriculum that the state had reviewed and approved as consistent with the ‘science of reading.’” 

It was estimated that the time available for administrative duty and travel, and coaching, “may equate to approximately 15-35 minutes per week per teacher.”

So, how could Mississippi’s full LBPA gains provide more than a small contribution to NAEP test score increases? 

Camilli concludes LBPA “most likely had modest impact on NAEP scores due to the relatively small number of students in designated schools and the even smaller number selected for the NAEP sample.”

Conversely, low-performing students in 82% schools were subject to some assessments, and retention, but not the comprehensive supports that were said to be crucial for the Miracle. Camilli explains, “In non-designated schools, LBPA exposure consisted of a modest state-wide bundle of supports including retention screening.”

So, was it the threat of retention that played the largest role in increasing test scores? Or, was it test-prep that improved scores? If so, is there any reason to believe those scores meant reading levels improved? After all, even though Camilli focused on the 4th grade NAEP scores that “Inside the Mississippi Marathon” emphasized, he noted Mississippi’s failure to improve 8th grade NAEP reading scores. 

That leads to the question as to whether reading comprehension improved.   

Camilli wrote that threat of retention was a prevalent incentive: 

It could be argued that the threat of retention was the primary treatment for the majority of Mississippi students, because students in non-designated schools received only distal instructional support in the form of teacher training. This threat itself may have caused principals, teachers and students to devote more instructional time and effort to literacy. 

(Distal instructional support means interventions, guidance, or systemic resources delivered remotely, indirectly, or at an organizational level rather than through immediate, face-to-face coaching.)

And, “This threat (of retention) itself may have caused principals, teachers and students to devote more instructional time and effort to literacy.”

Moreover, “the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) suggests that in 2015, the MDE revised its state assessment to align more closely with the NAEP assessment.”

Camilli noted the “vast literature on the outcomes and efficacy of test preparation, which is a notoriously controversial topic,” and the way that “it may lead to increases in test scores without enlarging students’ capabilities.”

And that leads to the question as to what was the effect of Mississippi’s use of NAEP materials in order increase its State Proficiency scores. When defending their failure to increase 8thgrade NAEP reading scores, advocates for the Miracle argue that their scores decreased less than other states. But, it’s possible (or likely) that those Mississippi scores have only declined by 2 points since NCLB became law in 2002 due, in part, to the use of NAEP materials.

On the other hand, from 2019 to 2024, the dubious Mississippi State 8th grade Reading Proficiency rates increased by 6 points, while its NAEP Proficiency scores dropped by 2 points, increasing its State/NAEP Proficiency Gap to 19 points. And the 4th grade gap reached 25 points!   

Those gaps again call into the question about whether Mississippi’s data-driven accountability and mass retentions actually improved reading, as opposed to producing short-lived surges in 4th grade test scores. And it further calls into question Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeve’s plan to ramp up those policies up until 8th grade. And I would further ask why Oklahoma should commit to Mississippi’s model, before they can present solid evidence that it has worked.

New reporting and scholarly research, like Dr. Camilli’s, indicate that the so-called “Miracle” is doing even more harm than anticipated. To defend public education, and the joy of reading, we need to better explain to its advocates why the benefits that once seemed possible, and the predictable harms of the “Marathon,” are imposing even greater threats on school cultures. We must also increase our conversations with Democrats and adult Republicans, who have questions about mass retentions of students.


In my experience with education advocates, which I suspect is similiar to education supporters in many Red states, they knew that legislation based on Mississippi’s experiment was bound to become law. So, they focused (usually unsuccessfully) on providing more social supports, like high-dosage tutoring, and better funding in order to provide human contacts, where students would be seen as persons, not test scores.   
But, now we must focus on the damage that we now know is being inflicted on K-12 education in Mississippi, and push back against those policies in our states.

Categories Education Reform

Todd Blanche Vows to Attack Abortion Rights in Every State

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
6

Behind closed doors, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche assured faith-based opponents of abortion that he would act forcefully to outlaw the purchase of abortion pills by mail.

The New Republic wrote:

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went mask-off last week, promising behind closed doors to roll back abortion access even further, and telling religious pro-life hard-liners that he wanted the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the right to abortion to become “permanent in every single state.”

Blanche made the comments in a “prayer call” last Thursday hosted by the White House Faith Office and attended by various faith leaders. The call was not open to press and not on the record, although the entirety of the call is now up on YouTube.  

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent,” Blanche said. “If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that.”

“They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs,” Blanche added, singling out abortion pills.

This is a far cry from the answer he offered at his confirmation hearing, when he claimed he would “carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act,” the 150-year-old law that bans the mailing of contraceptives and other things considered to be “obscene.”  

He also noted that the Trump administration is “putting practices and policies in place” to block abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol from being sent to states that have banned abortion, a process that would require the Justice Department to invoke the Comstock Act—something President Trump specifically said he wouldn’t do back in 2024 while campaigning. 

“A vote to confirm Todd Blanche is a vote ‘so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state,’” Senator Patty Murray wrote Tuesday on X. “Those were his own words to anti-abortion extremists. Senators who vote for Blanche are voting for an Attorney General who will attack abortion rights in EVERY state.”

Categories Health, Extremism, Gender, Medicine

Florida Threatens to Defund Catholic Schools Unless They Allow Students to Opt Out of Vaccines

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2026 //
11

Florida has become a very weird state. There’s hardly a conspiracy theory that Governor Ron DeSantis is not championing, especially when the subject is public health. DeSantis hired Dr. Joseph Ladapo as the state’s surgeon general, putting the lives of Floridians at risk.

Dr. Ladapo doesn’t believe in vaccinations. Disregarding science, he has sought to make all vaccines a matter of choice, not the protection of public health. Thus, no matter what other medical professionals may say, Dr. Ladapo wants to ban all vaccines mandates.

It’s an odd time to take a stand against vaccinations. Florida is experiencing an uptick in measles cases: As July 2026, Florida has reported 154 confirmed measles cases. Florida ranks among the states with the highest measles case counts in the country this year. 

Nationally, the CDC reports 2,371 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. so far in 2026—the highest annual total in more than 30 years.

Now Florida’s state attorney general has threatened to withhold public funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccines.

The Independent reported:

Florida’s attorney general has threatened to pull funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccine requirements. 

James Uthmeier, the attorney general, revealed on X that he had sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) expressing concern that schools within the faith may refuse to grant religious exemptions for vaccinations for the upcoming school year.

The letter, which was sent on July 31, is the latest in a series of pushes by lawmakers to change Florida’s vaccine mandates.

According to Uthmeier, at least one diocese appears to have “embraced” a position raised by the National Catholic Bioethics Center that the schools cannot offer exemptions on religious grounds because the Catholic Church does not teach that use of vaccinations produced in cell lines derived from the tissue of an aborted fetus is “intrinsically evil.”

Uthmeier, a Catholic himself, says that such a position is “concerning” as state law requires public and private schools to offer exemptions if parents have religious objections.

“I therefore urge Catholic schools to comply with Florida law and grant religious exemptions to school vaccine policies,” Uthmeier wrote. “Failure to comply could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs.”

The Archdiocese of Miami says that over 95 percent of students attending the city’s Catholic schools are on some kind of state scholarship, according to The Miami Herald. Many receive around $6,500 with which to pay for their tuition.

Uthmeier has demanded an answer to his letter by August 7.

Michele Taylor, a spokesperson for the FCCB, told CBS News that the conference is reviewing the letter and will respond to the attorney general. 

“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” Taylor said.

Under state law, students attending both public and private schools must be vaccinated against diseases including polio, chickenpox and measles. Schools, including Catholic institutions, do permit medical exemptions from vaccines with a valid doctor’s note. 

Vaccination mandates have increasingly come under attack in Florida, with Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, likening the mandates to “slavery” late last year.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

Ladapo also pledged to end “every last one” of the mandates. 

However, experts slammed his claims, with Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani branding the plans a “public health disaster in the making.”

The Florida Education Association also said that reducing vaccinations puts “children’s health and education at risk.”

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Health, Medicine, Safety, Science

Chan-Zuckerberg Abandon Model School They Founded and Funded

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2026 //
15

This is a very sad story.

Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire. His wife Priscilla Chan is a pediatrician. Ten years ago, they founded and funded a school that was designed to be different. They sought out children who were impoverished. Their school offered wrap-around services. They did all the right things.

But they are withdrawing their funding because they are disappointed by the school’s test scores. Test scores! Had they no better way of measuring success? Apparently not. Their scores were substantially higher than those of the local school district. But that wasn’t good enough. Were the children healthier? Were parents more engaged in their children’s education? In the end, the school was closed because its scores were not “good enough.”

It was supposed to be a long-term commitment, but it wasn’t. CZI surely could have made a 25-year commitment to their school but they pulled away their funding after only a decade. Do they have enough evidence to determine the value of investing in children’s well-being? No.

As I said, this is a very sad story.

Laura J. Nelson of The Wall Street Journal reported:

The school that Dr. Priscilla Chan co-founded for low-income students was designed to be different. 

The vast fortunes being minted in other corners of Silicon Valley had mostly missed East Palo Alto, Calif., where the Primary School opened in 2016. Funded through Chan’s philanthropy with her husband Mark Zuckerberg, the private, tuition-free school aimed to support the “whole child” through wraparound services, including free dental checkups, early-intervention screenings and wellness coaching for parents.

The school joined a long list of efforts by the country’s wealthiest, dating back to Andrew Carnegie, to put their stamp on the American classroom. Then, after a decade of operation and more than $125 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Primary School shut down in June.

Dr. Priscilla Chan speaks onstage at the 2025 SXSW Conference and Festival.

Dr. Priscilla Chan SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The board voted unanimously in April 2025 to close the school after learning that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative wouldn’t fund it after the 2025-26 academic year, people familiar with the situation said.

The school’s demise marks the end of one of the highest-profile education efforts funded by the couple’s philanthropic arm, which has shifted its focus from social issues toward scientific research. 

By some measures, the school’s academic performance fell well short of state norms and its leaders’ expectations, complicating efforts to spread its model to public and charter schools. By others, it succeeded in helping students outside the classroom in ways that are usually not available in public schools.

Board president Jean-Claude Brizard said that before the vote to close, he shared several options with CZI about the school’s future, including “winding down.” The board wouldn’t have voted to close without alignment from their biggest funder, he said. 

A CZI spokesperson said the decision to close was up to the school’s board and that the organization was focused on the school’s academic results, not the cost.

The Primary School’s closure has illustrated what philanthropic investment means for a community when it arrives, and when it leaves. 

“It was a godsend school,” said Mele Fakapelea, whose daughter Telesia won a lottery spot in the founding class. Fakapelea later enrolled her four younger children. Losing the school’s support system, she said, was “crushing.”

Mele Fakapelea and her daughter Telesia celebrating Telesia's 8th grade graduation.

Mele Fakapelea, in red lei, and her family at the eighth-grade graduation for her eldest daughter, Telesia, center. SAO LUTUI

Nearly 540 children were enrolled at the Primary School’s two campuses. The Ravenswood City Elementary School District is now preparing for an enrollment surge, renovating a campus to avoid packing students into portable trailers.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pledged $50 million when the closure was announced. That includes paying the balance of the school’s lease to the district and supporting local groups to carry on some services. CZI also gave $3.6 million to education savings accounts: $10,000 for elementary students, $2,500 for preschoolers and $1,000 for children in early-childhood education.

Business leaders and founders “look at K-12 education and go, ‘Man, how hard can it be to improve this thing?’” said Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “Well, it’s incredibly hard.”

Zuckerberg announced one of the couple’s first major charitable gifts, a $100 million grant to Newark, N.J., public schools, on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2010. The Primary School was far more hands-on.

Chan said then that her work as a pediatrician, and at a Boston housing-project after-school program, had taught her that systems to help children are often siloed. The school set out to help children overcome the effects of poverty and childhood trauma.

Staff worked with community clinics to find high-needs families, including students with behavioral issues and learning disabilities. Three in four students spoke a language other than English at home. 

Some things felt more startup than school. Teachers signed nondisclosure agreements as part of their employment contracts. Some toddlers wore recording devices at home to count back-and-forth conversations with their caregivers, part of a program to boost language development.

Chan was on campus often, including to read a Mo Willems book (“The Pigeon Needs a Bath!”) to kindergartners. During the launch of a curriculum with Sesame Workshop, Chan bantered with Elmo in a promotional video. Teachers attended the workshop’s 50th-anniversary gala and met Michelle Obama.

Parents were on campus regularly for coaching sessions and classes about child development. 

But the school had some challenges, including high principal turnover. It also initially lacked clear plans and approaches for special education and student discipline, former employees said. 

Katherine Carter, a former middle-school principal hired as a consultant in 2019, said there “really was not an understanding of the amount of time and support” and planning to launch a school. Carter, who left in 2024, said it can take five years for a new school’s approach to gel.

It took time for the new school to find the right curriculum and policies, said Lindsey Luebchow, a founding member of the Primary School. Principal turnover, she said, was one result of the structural challenge of “managing many programs in a single school.”

Chan was the Primary School’s co-founder and board chair for about eight years, until 2023; CZI was the main funder. Having one major backer in perpetuity hadn’t been the original plan, CZI said, but rather a model that “could be sustained through primarily public investment.” To that end, the Primary School said it tried to keep per-pupil spending at a reasonable level for a public school.

Chicago Public Schools head Jean-Claude Brizard speaks at a school event.

Jean-Claude Brizard, chairman of the board of directors for the Primary School SITTHIXAY DITTHAVONG/AP

Chan lobbied her network “to bring in other funding sources,” CZI said. But finding donors to supplement CZI was a tough sell, said Brizard, who is the former head of Chicago’s public schools. “Why would you give money to an entity being funded by one of the wealthiest people in the world?” he said.

Chan was “not shy” about her frustration with academic performance, Brizard said. Chan told The Wall Street Journal last year that outcomes weren’t where “frankly, anyone would have wanted them to be.”

Early last year, soon after Zuckerberg and Chan attended President Trump’s inauguration, CZI told staff its mission was changing. Funding for social advocacy had been “wound down” over the past several years to “align with our focus as a science philanthropy as well as the current legal and policy landscape,” staff were told. There was no evidence that the couple’s attendance influenced the board’s vote, CZI said.

That April, the Primary School’s board voted unanimously to close after the next academic year. The timing of the CZI changes and the inauguration, Brizard said, was “an unfortunate coincidence.” 

Angelica Cardenas, 29, whose 3-year-old daughter was enrolled along with her siblings’ five children, said she heard about the closure from the news. “If they knew they were going to stop investing in our community, it should have been spoken about earlier on,” Cardenas said.

Some staff and parents said they thought the Primary School would last for decades, in part because it was focused on long-term outcomes. 

“This was never something that was supposed to be just a philanthropic play in perpetuity,” Brizard said. “Maybe that wasn’t articulated well enough.”

A Stanford University report found that in spring 2025, 14% of local students in third grade and above exceeded literacy standards; at the Primary School, it was 26%; statewide, it was 47%. 

Eighth-grade students, many of whom had attended the school for a decade, demonstrated above 50% grade-level proficiency in their final year, the school said.

Luebchow said students saw “steady and encouraging” academic progress after the pandemic, and pointed to improvements in children’s well-being and socio-emotional skills. About 85% of students had their annual well-child visit, compared with 55% of children on Medicaid in the county.

Every teacher returned for the final year. School leaders told parents: We understand if you don’t want to stay. If you do, we’ll close the year out strong.

School leaders arranged tours of other schools, set up a station for parents to complete admission applications, and called in a representative from a 529 savings plan to help parents open the accounts seeded by CZI. 

Parents and teachers tried to savor the “lasts”: the last back-to-school night, with Pacific Island dancers on a tapa cloth mat. The last pep rally, where children blew red vuvuzelas.

Fakapelea’s oldest daughter, now 13, was one of two speakers when the school’s lone class of eighth-graders graduated in June. She cried afterward, as her family draped her in leis. 

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Closing schools, Education Reform, Poverty
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