Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
16

The Constitution says Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. The president executes the funding decisions of Congress.

Yesterday Trump called on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding public radio and public television. Never mind that National Public Radio brings news to listeners in areas totally saturated by rightwing Sinclair stations. Never mind that PBS is the best source of documentaries about science, history, nature, medicine, other nations, and global affairs. PBS is educational television at its best.

The Washington Post reported:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening seeking to prohibit federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order, which could be subject to legal challenge, called the broadcasters’ news coverage “biased and partisan.”

It instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease providing direct funds to either broadcaster. It also orders CPB to cease indirect funding of the services through grants to local public radio and television stations.

CPB is the main distributor of federal funds to public media. It receives about $535 million in federal funds per fiscal year, which it mostly spends on grants to hundreds of stations nationwide. The stations spend the grants on making their own programming or on buying programming from services such as NPR and PBS.

CPB, created by an act of Congress in 1967, also sometimes provides direct grants to NPR and PBS to produce national programs.
Thursday’s order instructs the CPB board to ensure that stations receiving its grants “do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Media, Trump

Daniel Dale of CNN: Trump’s 100 Lies in 100 Days

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
10

Daniel Dale is CNN’s fact-checker. To mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, Dale collected 100 Trump lies.

Here are a couple of examples:

73. Falsely claimed the US ranks dead last, 40th out of 40 countries, in international education rankings. The White House couldn’t identify any education rankings where the US ranked 40th out of 40 countries; FactCheck.org and PolitiFact have noted that even among the wealthy, developed countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the US ranks well above average in reading and science and below average but still far from last in math.

74. Falsely claimed that while Democratic governors closed schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, some governors “kept them open 100% of the time,” adding, “South Carolina did. Tennessee did.” The Republican governor of South Carolina ordered school closures in 2020, while the Republican governor of Tennessee recommended school closures that year (and the state’s school districts complied).

I would love to see Daniel Dale of CNN or Glen Kessler of The Washington Post fact-check Trump’s historical references.

A few days ago, I heard Trump say that the greatest period of American growth was 1890-1913. That era came to be known as the Age of the Robber Barons, when the gaps between the very rich and the very poor were huge.

What disaster happened in 1913? Congress introduced the income tax. Trump believes that the federal government paid its expenses solely by charging tariffs on imported goods.

In Trump’s view, the government should once again rely on tariffs.

What he doesn’t acknowledge is that the federal government provided few services in 1913: no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no subsidized housing, management of public lands, no environmental protection, no air traffic control. On and on.

The rich lived in grandeur. The poor lived in squalor.

That’s what Trump considers our best era.

Historical ignorance is dangerous.

Categories Ethics, Lies, Trump

Republicans Were Eager to Investigate Biden, But Not Trump

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
7

Philip Bump of The Washington Post notes the hypocrisy of Republicans, especially James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who searched and searched forevidence of President Biden’s corruption. He never found it but he never stopped looking and releasing press releases about the corruption he expected to find.

Now there is a genuine grifter in the White House, and Comer has lost interest in corruption, even when it’s detailed on the front pages of the daily press.

Yesterday, we learned that a fund in Abu Dhabi had invested $2 billion in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business. Is this what we expect of our presidents? Will there be a Congressional investigation?

Bump writes:

One of the more striking aspects of Elon Musk’s rampage through the federal government has been that it is, at least in theory, redundant. There already exist congressional bodies and powers that are ostensibly focused on waste and corruption. The House Oversight Committee, for example, declares as its mission to “ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies.” Why deal with Musk’s messiness when Republicans control how the House exercises that power?

We are not so naive that we cannot summon some answers to that question. One reason for this approach, for example, is that Musk was tasked with operating outside the system by design, pushing for sweeping cuts to congressionally appropriated spending specifically to get around the system of checks and balances.

A more important reason, though, is that the majority of members on the House Oversight Committee and, in particular, Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky.) have a specific vision for how their power should be deployed. Their mission is not to work across the aisle to make government faster and cleaner. As has been made very clear in the two years since Republicans retook the majority, their mission instead is to generate allegations of impropriety by their political opponents while shielding their allies.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the conflicting approach Comer and his committee have taken to allegations of self-enrichment by the nation’s chief executive.

Days after Republicans won their majority in November 2022, Comer held a news conference in which he sought to draw attention to claims — stoked in right-wing media and embraced by his party while in the minority — that President Joe Biden had benefited from his son Hunter Biden’s consulting work. He insisted that “the Biden family swindled investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars — all with Joe Biden’s participation and knowledge” and suggested that the sitting president (and presumed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee) might be “a national security risk” who was “compromised by foreign governments.”

What ensued over the next 16 months was far less “Law & Order” than “Keystone Kops.” Comer and other Republican leaders made little progress in tying Biden to his son’s business beyond the vaguest of connections, like that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during business meetings. Countervailing evidence for the idea that Joe Biden was entwined with Hunter’s foreign partners was ignored or spun away. One particular allegation hyped by Comer backfired spectacularly.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was eventually pressured into announcing an impeachment probe targeting the president mostly centered on the same things Comer had been claiming since 2022. It went nowhere.
To put a fine point on it, two years of searching and subpoenas and depositions provided no concrete evidence (and very little circumstantial evidence!) that Joe Biden had used his position for his own personal benefit. Two seconds into Donald Trump’s second term in office, by contrast, there could have been any number of ripe targets for a similarly focused investigation.

Comer very obviously has no interest in doing so. When he inherited the Oversight Committee in 2023, in fact, he quietly ended an investigation into Trump’s finances, despite the committee having prevailed in a legal fight to obtain documentation from Trump’s accounting firm. Even with the former president pushing for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the various ways in which Comer’s allegations against Biden were much more obviously applicable to the Trumps attracted no interest from House Republicans.

Since the inauguration in January, viable avenues for investigation have become only more numerous.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an exhaustive look at the Trumps’ creation of a crypto-centered investment structure called World Liberty Financial. It has explicit manifestations of nearly everything Comer was unable to prove about Biden and his family: exercising presidential power for the benefit of the company (and by extension himself and his sons), allowing partners to assume the trappings of the federal government for private financial discussions, foreign investors admitting that their interest is driven by the president’s participation.

The Washington Post recently detailed Trump’s rollout of a different cryptoworld product: a bespoke coin that serves as little more than a speculative vehicle — one from which Trump and his family can directly profit. Trump recently announced that top investors in the coin would be granted an audience with him. At around the same time he did so, the federal government registered the domain thetrilliondollardinner.gov.

“He’s actually selling access, personal access, to him and to the White House if people invest in this meme coin, which really has no intrinsic value,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Action, told The Post. “If you are a foreign government burdened by tariffs, will you be enticed to invest? If you’re a criminal felon, will you maybe invest in hopes of they’ll give you an opportunity to make your case for a pardon?”
Oh, that reminds me: At least two investors in World Liberty Financial have already received presidential pardons.

Then there was the announcement last month that Donald Trump Jr. is the co-founder of a new private club in D.C. For a membership fee of $500,000, you can mingle with MAGAworld luminaries and — if the kickoff event is any indicator — members of the Trump administration. None of this rinky-dink “I’ll put my dad on speakerphone if he calls” stuff. Aptly enough, the club is called Executive Branch.

Those are just recent reports, mind you. The Trump Organization (which directly enriches the president) still operates private businesses around the world, at times in partnership with foreign governments. Trump himself has visited properties run by his private company on 42 of his 102 days in office, giving customers a decent shot at getting face-time with the president. Even when he isn’t at a Trump Organization property, he’s still selling pro-Trump merchandise (like a “Trump 2028” hat) both directly through the Trump Organization and through licensing deals.

Comer, meanwhile, has been focused not on investigating the obvious questions about Trump but, instead, on probing ActBlue — a fundraising system used by Democratic politicians. In an egregious break with the tradition of presidents avoiding interference in the Justice Department, Trump used the pretext of the House probe to demand that ActBlue face criminal investigation.

On Wednesday morning, Comer appeared on Fox Business to discuss Republican efforts to draft a budget bill. He began by asserting that his committee had identified billions in potential budgetary savings (which he later explained would come from targeting federal employee benefits, not from any robust investigation unearthing fraud or waste). Asked about articles of impeachment filed against Trump this week, he leveled a deeply ironic charge at his colleagues across the aisle.

“Harassing, obstructing — that’s all the Democrats know,” Comer said, while insisting that impeachment would go nowhere. “They don’t have any ideas or vision for the future.”

If there is one thing that can be said of Trump, it is that he has a vision for the future — in particular as it relates to the robustness of his own bank account. Comer and his colleagues in the House have proved to be more than happy to not stand in his way.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Trump

Trump Launches an Era of Unprecedented Corruption in His Second Term

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
8

The second Trump administration may well go down in history as the most corrupt presidency in our history. We learned yesterday that the Trump family crytocurrency just received an investment of $2 billion from a fund in Abu Dhabi; this is a sure way to gain access to the patriarch in the White House. Not only is he enriching himself and his family, but has also allowed Elon Musk to violate every ethical rule in the federal government while shackling his competitors.

Steven Rattner, a columnist for The New York Times, details some of the ways that Trump enriches himself during his Presidency. We should not be surprised. Throughout his adult life, Trump has been a hustler, a con man, a performer, and a man who loves money.

He wrote:

No presidential administration is completely free from questionable ethics practices, but Donald Trump has pushed us to a new low. He has accomplished that by breaking every norm of good government, often while enriching himself, whether by pardoning a felon who, together with his wife, donated $1.8 million to the Trump campaign; promoting Teslas on the White House driveway; or holding a private dinner for speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency.

Mr. Trump’s blatant transgressions have swamped those of any modern president and even those of his first term. Remember the outrage when he refused to divest his financial holdings or when he used a Washington hotel he owned as a kind of White House waiting room? Those moves seem quaint in comparison.

In his trampling of historically appropriate behavior, Mr. Trump appears to be pursuing several agendas. Personal enrichment stands out: Imagine any other president collecting a cut of sales from a cryptocurrency marketed with his likeness. There is the way he is expanding his powers: He has ignored or eliminated large swaths of rules that would have inhibited his freedom of action and his ability to put trusted acolytes in key roles. And then there’s rewarding donors, whether through pardons or favors for their clients.

I was working in the Washington bureau of The Times when Richard Nixon resigned, and even he — taken down by his efforts to cover up his misdeeds — did not engage in such a vast array of sordid practices.

The corruption of Trump 2.0 has not gotten the attention it deserves amid the barrage of news about Mr. Trump’s tariff wars, his attack on scientific research and his senior appointees’ Signal text chains. But self-dealing is such a defining theme of this administration that it needs to be called out. Like much that Mr. Trump has done in other areas, it announces to the world that America’s leaders can no longer be trusted to follow its laws and that influence is up for sale.

Just as in the post-Nixon era, when guardrails were established to prevent transgressions, the next president could decide to restore some of the sound government practices that Mr. Trump has trampled on. But the damage he has inflicted by, say, pardoning his donors or lining his own pockets is irreversible.

The below represents just a sampling of what’s transpired these past 100 days.

  • He turned a legitimate federal employee designation into a loophole. By giving senior officials such as Elon Musk the title “special government employee,” Mr. Trump avoided requirements that they publicly disclose their financial holdings and divest any that present conflicts before taking jobs in the administration.
  • He ended bans that stopped executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists or seeking lobbying jobs themselves for at least two years.
  • He loosened the enforcement of laws that curb foreign lobbying and bribery.
  • He dismissed the head of the office that polices conflicts of interest among senior officials.
  • He jettisoned the head of the office that, among other things, protects whistle-blowers and ensures political neutrality in federal workplaces.
  • He purged nearly 20 nonpartisan inspectors general who were entrusted with rooting out corruption within the government.

Rewarding donors is part of any presidential administration. Every president in my memory appointed supporters to ambassadorships. But again, Mr. Trump has gone much further.

  • Jared Isaacman, a billionaire with deep tentacles into SpaceX, gave $2 million to the inaugural committee and was nominated to head NASA — SpaceX’s largest customer.
  • The convicted felon Trevor Milton and his wife donated $1.8 million to the campaign and Mr. Milton received a pardon, which also spared him from paying restitution.
  • The lobbyist Brian Ballard raised over $50 million for Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Mr. Trump handed major victories to two Ballard clients. He delayed a U.S. ban on China-owned TikTok his first day in office and killed an effort to ban menthol cigarettes, a major priority of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, on his second.

Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire who spent $277 million to back Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates, requires his own category.

As a special government employee, Mr. Musk is supposed to perform limited services to the government for no more than 130 days a year. By law, no government official — even a special government employee — can participate in any government matter that has a direct effect on his or her financial interests. That criminal statute hasn’t stopped Mr. Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency from interacting with at least 10 of the agencies that oversee his business interests.

  • He installed a SpaceX engineer at the Federal Aviation Administration to review its air traffic control system. The F.A.A. is reportedly considering canceling Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract to update its aging telecommunications infrastructure in favor of a SpaceX’s Starlink product. (SpaceX has denied it is taking over the contract.)
  • SpaceX is a leading contender to secure a large share of Mr. Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense project, an effort that could involve billions of revenue for the winner.
  • X, Mr. Musk’s social media outlet, has become an official source of government news. The White House welcomed a reporter from the platform at a recent briefing, and at least a dozen government agencies started DOGE-focused X accounts.
  • As Mr. Musk’s political activities started to repel many potential customers of Tesla, his electric vehicle company, Mr. Trump lined Tesla vehicles up on the White House driveway and extolled their benefits. Then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers to buy Tesla shares.
  • DOGE nearly halved the team at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates autonomous vehicles. The agency has been investigating whether Tesla’s self-driving technology played a role in the death of a pedestrian in Arizona.

Critics of crypto argue that it has demonstrated little value beyond enabling criminal activity. Despite this, Mr. Trump has wasted no time eliminating regulatory oversight of the industry at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, even as his family grows ever more invested in it.

By enabling money to be delivered anonymously and without any bank participation, crypto offers the possibility for any individual or foreign state to funnel money to Mr. Trump and his family secretly. Moreover, Bloomberg News recently estimated that the Trump family crypto fortune is nearing $1 billion.

  • On the eve of his inauguration he released $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins — a type of crypto derived from internet jokes or mascots. Next, the S.E.C. announced it would not regulate memecoins. Then last week, Mr. Trump offered a private dinner at his golf club and a separate “Special VIP Tour” to the top 25 investors in $TRUMP, causing the price of the currency to surge and enriching the family. (That tour was initially advertised as being at the White House. Then the words “White House” disappeared, but the rest of that prize remained.)
  • The S.E.C. eliminated its crypto-enforcement program, ending or pausing nearly every crypto-related lawsuit, appeal and investigation. That includes the civil suit against Justin Sun, a crypto entrepreneur who had separately purchased $75 million worth of tokens tied to Mr. Trump’s family after the election.
  • The S.E.C. also suspended its civil fraud case against Binance, the huge crypto exchange that pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations and allowed terrorist financing, hacking and drug trafficking to proliferate on its platform. Soon after, the company met with Treasury officials to seek looser oversight while also negotiating a business deal with Mr. Trump’s family.
  • World Liberty Financial, a crypto company that Mr. Trump and his sons helped launch, said it had sold $550 million worth of digital coins. A business entity linked to him gets 75 percent of the sales.
  • The Trump family has said it will partner with the Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com to introduce a series of funds comprising crypto and securities with a made-in-America focus.
  • The federal government’s “crypto czar,” David Sacks, Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Musk all have connections to the market. (Mr. Musk named DOGE after a memecoin.)
  • Mr. Trump is reportedly on his way to raising $500 million for his political action committees — highly unusual for a president who cannot run for re-election.
  • A new Trump Tower is underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second largest city, with plans for two more projects for the kingdom announced after Mr. Trump’s November election victory, all in partnership with a Saudi company with close ties to the Saudi government.
  • Mr. Trump’s team asked about bringing the signature British Open golf tournament to his Turnberry resort in Scotland during a visit of the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to the White House.
  • He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which his family owns a significant stake.

It’s all a sorry and sordid picture, a president who had already set a new standard for egregious and potentially illegal behavior hitting new lows with metronomic regularity.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Fraud, Musk, Elon, Trump

Conflict of Interest? No Problem. Trump Family Will Collect Hundreds of Millions

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2025 //
10

David Yaffe-Bellany of The New York Times reported on a startling development in Dubai that will enrich the Trump family by hundreds of millions of dollars. Is it a conflict of interest? Of course. Will it matter to the Republican leaders in Congress? No. Has there ever been a President who used his office for financial gain so brazenly? No. Trump is #1.

Gaffe-Bellamy writes:

Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s cryptofirm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, revealed that a so-called stable coin developed by the firm, would be used to complete the transaction between the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.

Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest.

MGX’s use of the World Liberty stablecoin, USD1, brings a Trump family company into business with a venture firm backed by a foreign government. The deal creates a formal link between World Liberty and Binance — a company that has been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.

And the splashy announcement served as an advertisement to crypto investors worldwide about the potential for forming a partnership with a company tied to President Trump, who is listed as World Liberty’s chief crypto advocate.

“We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” said Mr. Witkoff, who is the son of the White House envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. “It’s only the beginning.”

Mr. Witkoff and Eric Trump were speaking on a panel at Token2049, a major crypto conference in the United Arab Emirates, where more than 10,000 digital currency enthusiasts have gathered for a week of networking. It was the latest stop in an international tour by Mr. Witkoff, who visited Pakistan last month with his business partners to meet the prime minister and other government officials. Eric Trump, who runs the family business, has spent the week in Dubai, where he announced plans to back a Trump-branded hotel and tower.

There is more.

This is a gift article so you should be able to read it in full even without a subscription.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, International, Trump

Trump Celebrated His First 100 Days by Attacking Biden

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2025 //
16

Multiple polls show that Trump has the worst ratings of any President in decades at this point in his term. But he doesn’t believe the polls unless they affirm his claims. While polls show that the public is opposed to his tariffs, economic uncertainty, and continued inflation, he continues to claim great success and to attack Joe Biden. One big change: he switched referencing “the late, great Hannnibal Lecter” and now refers to “the late, great Al Capone.”

In other words, he’s the same old Trump: boasting, lying, and insulting his enemies.

Dana Milbank watched his 100-day celebration of the “new golden age” and reported back:

President Donald Trump, at his Michigan rally on Tuesday night marking 100 days in office, gave a shout-out to his traveling groupies from the campaign trail. There was “my friend, Blacks for Trump,” the guy in the brick-patterned suit he identified as “Mr. Wall,” the group of “beautiful women” from North Carolina and the “Front Row Joes.”

“I miss you guys,” he said. “I miss the campaign.”
I believe him.

After 100 days on the job, Trump has found the hard work of governing to be less pleasant. His tariffs have destabilized markets and brought historic levels of pessimism to American businesses and consumers. His policies have alienated allies and emboldened Russia and China. He has the lowest approval rating that any president in generations has experienced at this stage of his presidency.

Those were simpler times, when he could make up nonsense claims about how Joe Biden, “the worst president in history,” had turned the United States into a “failing nation” and a “third-world country” — and could present an alternative in which Trump would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, spread peace across the planet and make a booming U.S. economy the envy of the world.

So what did Trump do to mark his 100th day in office? He renewed his campaign against Biden.
“What’s better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe?” he asked his supporters in Michigan. “Ready? A poll!”

Having ascertained from the crowd that they preferred the moniker “Crooked Joe,” Trump revived a favorite campaign story about his retired former opponent. “He goes to the beach, right? And he could fall asleep … drooling out of the side of his mouth. And he’d be sleeping within 10 minutes.” The story went on in disjointed fashion: “Carrying the aluminum chair, you know, the kind that’s meant for old people and children to carry? It weighs like about four ounces. And he couldn’t get his feet out of the sand … He’d be in a bathing suit. Somebody convinced him that he looks great in a bathing suit.” [Imagine Trump in a bathing suit!]

Trump invoked Biden’s name 21 times on Tuesday night, not counting an additional nine references to “Sleepy Joe” and “Crooked Joe,” a transcript shows. This is on top of various and sundry disparaging references to the “last administration” or simply “this group” or “that guy.” By comparison, Trump made just two mentions of the economy in an hour and a half, and seven of inflation — and even these were often employed to describe “Biden’s inflation disaster” and the like.

Here was a president with so little to say about his own achievements that he dwelled on the imagined failures of another man: “Sleepy Joe, the worst president in history … Biden had no control … Joe Biden was down 35 points. The debate was not a good one for him … Whoever operated the autopen was the real president.”

On some level, Trump must have known it wouldn’t really work to blame Biden for his problems. Recounting a conversation with an appointee about the price of eggs, Trump said the price would have to come down, because “nobody is going to believe me when you get out there that it’s Sleepy Joe Biden’s fault.”

And yet that’s just what Trump spent the night doing. For 100 days, he has run the country with authoritarian sweep, unconstrained by Congress (with its subservient GOP majority) or by concern for what is legal or constitutional. If things aren’t going well, he has nobody to blame but himself.

Yet he looked everywhere for villains to take the fall. He mocked “Kamala, Kamala, Kamala” and “lunatic” Bernie Sanders “going around with AOC.” He blamed “fake polls” put out by the “crooked people” in the media. He cited the “totally crazy” backbenchers who want to impeach him and imagined that “the radical Democrat Party is racing to the defense of some of the most violent savages on the face of the Earth.”

He recited his grievances as if the months and years had never passed: Democrats “tried to cheat” in 2024. They “tried to jail your president.” He was “under investigation more than the late, great Alphonse Capone.” To his familiar list of persecutors, he added a few new entrants: “grandstander” Republicans,” the Federal Reserve and “communist radical left judges.”

Even so, he insisted that he presided over “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people.” By “many people” he apparently meant “Stephen Miller,” for the presidential aide joined Trump on the stage and shouted at the crowd that Trump is “the greatest president in American history!”

Trump regaled his audience with phony achievements in lieu of actual ones. The cost of eggs is down 87 percent. We now have a trade surplus. His actual approval rating is “in the 60s or 70s.” Americans say the country is headed in the right direction for “the first time ever.” His tariffs are acts of “genius.”

The crowd cheered for his inventions. They cheered for Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth. They cheered for a video showing migrants, deported without due process, being humiliated at an El Salvador prison. They cheered him for pardoning the “political prisoners” who attacked the Capitol. They cheered when a junior aide joined him on stage and asked, “Trump 2028, anybody?”

The rally began, as during the campaign, with the song “God Bless the USA” and ended by doing his Trump dance to “YMCA.” Supporters waved placards proclaiming a new “Golden Age.”
And yet, the magic was gone. The pool traveling with Trump’s motorcade found relatively few supporters lining the motorcade route. When Trump called a supporter onstage for a lengthy tribute ending with the words “President Trump, I love you,” a girl on the stage behind Trump yawned. Attendees started trickling out of the arena 30 minutes into his speech and continued doing so over the next hour.

Perhaps they had come seeking reassurance about their present troubles — only to hear from a man mired stubbornly in the past.

Categories Education Reform

Thom Hartmann: Democracy Can Die in Broad Daylight

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2025 //
11

Thom Hartmann sees the pattern on the rug. Trump and Musk are stifling democratic institutions and rushing headlong towards the tyranny they both admire. Trump thinks that he can make himself dictator for life, Like his buddies in Russia and North Korea. Will the public defend the Constitution?

He wrote:

When Harvard, one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions of higher learning, stands defiant as the federal government freezes billions in funding simply because it refuses to knuckle under to authoritarian demands — like gutting DEI programs and turning faculty into immigration informants — we’re no longer playing the usual game of politics.


This is the open throttling of academic freedom, part of a larger, deliberate campaign to silence dissent, centralize power, and erase democratic norms.


We’ve seen this playbook before in other countries — but now it’s being run right here, in the land that once proudly called itself the world’s beacon of liberty.


Democracy doesn’t die in darkness, as the saying goes; it suffocates in broad daylight.


Americans are witnessing an unprecedented assault on the very foundations of our democratic experiment, orchestrated with a precision that would make authoritarian strongmen worldwide nod in approval.


Senator Chris Murphy has raised alarm bells about what he describes as a methodical attack on American institutions that are supposed to keep government accountable to its citizens. By his account, the strategy isn’t dramatic coups or burning parliaments; that’s not how modern democracies perish. Instead, they’re slowly dismantled through the calculated erosion of accountability mechanisms.


History provides a disturbing playbook, and we’re watching it unfold right now here in America. Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğan didn’t need tanks in the streets. They understood that the process is multi-part but straightforward:


— Legitimize political violence,
— Capture the media,
— Intimidate lawyers,
— Install corrupt leaders within regulatory and police agencies,
— Disappear first minorities and later opposition leaders,
— Silence universities, and
— Starve opposition movements by denying their nonprofit status and funding.


Consider what we’re seeing unfold. The recent January 6 pardons sent an unmistakable message about the acceptability of political violence. When legislators openly express fears of “retaliation” — as Senator Lisa Murkowski just did — we’re already several steps down a dangerous path.


Meanwhile, the concentration of media power in the hands of billionaires who increasingly bend to political pressure isn’t accidental. Whether through ownership, lawsuits, or regulatory threats, the ability to speak truth to power is being systematically constrained.


Universities, traditionally bastions of free thought and youth activism, face unprecedented pressure to conform or lose federal support.

Legal professionals, our front-line defenders of constitutional rights, are being asked to choose between principles and practice.


The economic dimension of this strategy can’t be ignored. Targeted tariffs and funding cuts effectively create a corporate compliance regime where business survival depends on political loyalty. When small-dollar online giving platforms become targets, it’s clear this is about drying up resources for political opposition.


Senator Murphy’s warning carries particular weight: “I still believe we can stop it,” he says. His prescription includes institutional solidarity, mass mobilization, and political courage. These steps aren’t just wishful thinking: history shows they work when deployed with determination.


The challenges are clear, but so is the path forward. Democrats and defenders of democracy must recognize this isn’t politics as usual. The systematic undermining of accountability mechanisms isn’t merely partisan: it’s anti-democratic in the most fundamental sense.


It’s the first stages of outright tyranny, the first American dictatorship.


If conventional resistance proves insufficient, Murphy suggests civil disobedience may become necessary. That’s not a suggestion to be taken lightly, especially from a sitting US senator.

The coming months will test America’s democratic resolve. The institutions being targeted aren’t merely political; they’re the scaffolding of self-governance itself. As Murphy warns, “We still have the power, but we probably have less time than most think.”


For those wondering where the line exists between alarmism and appropriate warning, consider this: When elected officials speak openly about fear of retaliation, when media owners preemptively capitulate, when universities face unprecedented political pressure, and when legal professionals must toe ideological lines, we’re no longer discussing hypotheticals.


The American experiment has faced threats before, but, outside of the Confederacy, rarely have they been so comprehensively designed or so methodically executed.


Recognition of this reality isn’t partisan, it’s patriotic. The future of American democracy depends on understanding what’s at stake and acting accordingly.


The assault on Harvard is just one chapter in a larger story — one where the villains aren’t hiding in shadows, but are operating in full view with chilling precision.


The question isn’t whether this is happening. It’s whether enough Americans will recognize the danger in time to stop it.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Trump, Tyranny

Poll: Most Americans Believe Trump is “a Dangerous Dictator” Who Might “Destroy American Democracy”

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2025 //
22

Trump has used his presidency to attack universities, schools, media organizations, corporations, foreign students, and everyone else he sees as his enemy. He has used Elon Musk to close down agencies–like USAID–and Departments–like Education. He has taken personal control of the Kennedy Center and intends to remove exhibits he doesn’t like from the Smithsonian. He has directed the Department of Justice to investigate his critics and enemies. He has blighted whatever he chose. The list of his attacks on democracy is long.

A new poll reported by Axios shows that most Americans (52%) think he is a “dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” He retains the support of a majority of Republicans and whites, who believe he needs more time to “make America great again.”

Categories Education Reform

Musk’s DOGE Protects One (1) Person: Elon Musk

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2025 //
6

Before Trump was elected, Elon Musk was being investigated by multiple federal agencies. After Trump’s election, Musk persuaded Trump to put him in charge of a cost-cutting operation called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which was tasked with cutting the budgets or shuttering multiple federal agencies.

Musk and his team of hackers were ruthless in closing agencies that did not like. They shut down USAID, which provided food and medicine to the world’s neediest families and children.They terminated scientific research on a large number of university campuses and in the NIH, which sponsors critical research into cures for deadly diseases. They defunded large and small.

But there is one kind of project they not defund: anything that pays federal funds to Elon Musk.

More than that, Musk had a very lucky break. His good friend Trump, to whom he gave nearly $300 million for the 2024 election, is unlikely to prosecute his pal Elon.

Lawrence Darmiento of the Los Angeles Times had the story:

Elon Musk and his companies faced at least $2.37 billion in potential federal fines and penalties the day President Trump took office, according to a congressional report released Monday that highlights the possible conflicts of interest posed by the billionaire’s cost-cutting work in government.

The 43-page memo by the minority staff of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), is the most exhaustive attempt yet to detail Musk’s alleged conflicts as an advisor to Trump and chief promoter of his team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Based on publicly available documents, media reports and the committee’s own calculations, the memo found that as of Jan. 20, Musk and his companies were “subject to at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies” and that 40 of those created $2.37 billion in potential liabilities.

“Mr. Musk has taken a chainsaw to the federal government with no apparent regard for the law or for the people who depend on the programs and agencies he so blithely destroys,” the memo stated. “The through line connecting many of Mr. Musk’s decisions appears to be self-enrichment and avoiding what he perceives as obstacles to advancing his interests.”

The memo notes that Musk’s companies have received more than $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits going back more than 20 years. And it notes that SpaceX, as of Friday, had $10.1 billion in federal contracts.

“President Trump could not have chosen a person more prone to conflicts of interest,” states the memo, which calls on the president, executive departments and regulatory agencies to “take coordinated action to address Elon Musk’s threat to the integrity of federal governance.”

To no one’s surprise, the white Hohse press office indignantly insisted that Musk had no conflicts of interest.

The committee found that Tesla created most of the potential penalties for Musk — a cumulative $1.89 billion — due to investigations, lawsuits and other issues involving eight agencies.

The largest single liability was a potential $1.19-billion fine due to a reported criminal investigation opened by the Department of Justice into allegedly false or misleading statements made by Musk and the company about its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving Features since as early as 2016.

The Times previously reported the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is probing the Full-Self Driving technology after reports of four collisions in low-visibility conditions, including one in which a pedestrian was killed.

However, doubts have been raised about the Justice Department’s commitment to any prosecution. The memo notes that in February the department dismissed a lawsuit it filed against SpaceX for allegedly discouraging asylum seekers and refugees from applying for jobs or hiring them because of their citizenship status. It calculated the lawsuit could have exposed SpaceX to $46.1 million in liabilities.

The second single largest liability of $462 million facing Musk also involved Tesla. It arose out of a 2023 lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the company’s alleged toleration of widespread racial harassment of Black employees at its Fremont, Calif., factory. Tesla has denied the allegations. In January, Trump fired two Democratic commissioners and the agency’s general counsel.

How likely is it that any of these charges will go to trial?

Categories Budget Cuts, Corruption, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Musk, Elon

Did Musk and DOGE Save Any Money at All?

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2025 //
9

In an investigative report, The New York Times demonstrated that Elon Musk failed to deliver on his claim that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Not only did he fall short, but his efforts were so reckless that they might cost money instead of saving it.

Having launched his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (which is not a department at all and was never authorized by Congress), Musk and his then-partner Vivek Ramaswamy promised to cut $2 trillion. Their goal dropped to $1 trillion, and Vivek left the team to run for Governor in Ohio.

Some of DOGE’s claims turned out be be inflated (one alleged saving of $8 billion turned out to be a saving of only $8 million.

Musk eventually reduced his saving claim to only $150 billion.

Since DOGE began, thousands of federal employees have been fired. Some have been rehired after courts decided their firing was illegal. Some have been fired, rehired, and fired again. Some career employees have taken buyout offers. Tens of thousands of federal employees have been laid off, without regard to their experience. There was no time for DOGE workers to evaluate each person they ousted, nor did DOGE have the competence to judge its victims.

The New York Times concluded that DOGE’s activities may actually save nothing at all. Firing workers is expensive when you do it the wrong way, the DOGE way.

Elizabeth Williamson of The New York Times wrote:

President Trump and Elon Musk promised taxpayers big savings, maybe even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes, when the Department of Government Efficiency was let loose on the federal government. Now, as he prepares to step back from his presidential assignment to cut bureaucratic fat, Mr. Musk has said without providing details that DOGE is likely to save taxpayers only $150 billion.

That is about 15 percent of the $1 trillion he pledged to save, less than 8 percent of the $2 trillion in savings he had originally promised and a fraction of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spent in the 2024 fiscal year.

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. At the Internal Revenue Service, a DOGE-driven exodus of 22,000 employees would cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to figures from the Budget Lab at Yale University. The total number of departures is expected to be as many as 32,000.

Neither of these estimates includes the cost to taxpayers of defending DOGE’s moves in court. Of about 200 lawsuits and appeals related to Mr. Trump’s agenda, at least 30 implicate the department.

The errors and obfuscations underlying DOGE’s claims of savings are well documented. Less known are the costs Mr. Musk incurred by taking what Mr. Trump called a “hatchet” to government and the resulting firings, agency lockouts and building seizures that mostly wound up in court.

“Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating,” said Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service. “He’s inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come.”

Mr. Stier and other experts on the federal work force said it did not have to be this way. Federal law and previous government shutdowns offered Mr. Musk a legal playbook for reducing the federal work force, a goal that most Americans support. But Mr. Musk chose similar lightning-speed, blunt-force methods he used to drastically cut Twitter’s work force after he acquired the company in 2022.

“The law is clear,” said Jeri Buchholz, who over three decades in public service handled hiring and firing at seven federal agencies, including NASA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. “They can do all the things they are currently doing, but they can’t do them the way they’re doing them. They can either start over and do it right, or they can be in court for forever.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Musk, Elon, Trump
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