Trump Plans to Spend Billions for Vouchers, Mostly for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
10

The Trump administration plans to roll out a massive voucher program that will be available in every state.

We know from the statistics of every voucher program that most vouchers will be claimed by students who never attended public schools. The voucher recipients are already attending religious and private schools. Their parents are able to pay tuition, but will gladly accept a government subsidy to lower their costs. In every state with universal vouchers, most are taken by students already in nonpublic schools.

We also know that vouchers will not help the poorest kids, who are likely to be rejected by good private schools and end up losing ground in substandard schools. Vouchers have not improved education in any state that adopted them. One of the nation’s most expansive voucher programs is in Florida; that state just posted its worst NAEP score in two decades. To learn more, read Josh Cowen’s The Privateers.

Nonetheless, Laura Meckler reports in The Washington Post, the Trump administration is prepared to dole out billions of federal dollars to pay for tuition at nonpublic schools, most of them religious.

Meanwhile, the public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of all K-12 students in the U.S., would receive less funding, have larger class sizes, and less money for teachers’ salaries.

Vouchers have been tested in state referenda repeatedly and have consistently, often by huge margins.

Meckler writes:

The school voucher movement has scored victories in conservative states in a quest to send public dollars to private schools, with tax money following the child. Now backers see their best chance yet to go national.


Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, are pushing for a new tax credit that would direct billions of dollars a year to school voucher programs — and not just in conservative states.


The program would be fueled by a powerful, never-before-tried incentive: Taxpayers who donate to voucher programs would get 100 percent of their money back when they file their taxes. That means the tax break for giving to voucher programs would dwarf tax incentives for giving to churches, hospitals, food banks and every other charity.


Taxpayers who donate to other charities might qualify for a tax deduction — meaning they would not pay taxes on the dollars they contribute. But donors to voucher programs would get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, meaning they could subtract the full value of the donation from their bottom line tax liability.

The goal is to give more families more options for their children’s education. Too many children, supporters say, are stuck in public schools that do not serve them well but cannot afford other options. A federal program would give more children in more states the opportunity to make a different choice for their education. The tax credit, they say, would encourage and allow taxpayers who want to help to do so.


One version of the plan would cost the federal government $5 billion a year in lost revenue; another version, $10 billion. At $10,000 per student, $5 billion would be enough to pay for about 500,000 vouchers, which families could use to send their children to private schools or to pay for home schooling expenses. Under a version of the bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee last fall and a new version introduced this year, all but the wealthiest families would be eligible to receive vouchers.

“It would be transformational,” said Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, which advocates for school choice programs. [Blew worked for Betsy DeVos when she was Secretary of Education.] “Although the numbers are very small in the federal context, in the context of the school choice movement, these are huge numbers.”

About 46 million American children — nearly nine in 10 — attend public schools; about 5 million are enrolled in private schools, according to federal data.

But opposition is fierce from those who say these plans drain resources from public schools, which are required by law to take all children. Public school advocates are mobilizing publicly and privately against the plan, lobbying Republicans who might oppose it based on the merits or the cost.

“We’re making sure the public understands this is the greatest threat to public education we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA, the School Superintendents Association, who helps lead a coalition of more than 60 groups opposed to the voucher plan.

Pudelski noted that unlike public schools, private schools can reject students based on their religion, test scores, disability or ability to pay tuition. The vast majority of vouchers in existing state programs go to religious schools.

“It would be the first time the federal government is choosing to subsidize a secondary private system of education that can pick and choose the students it educates over the one that welcomes all,” she said.

Voters, too, have opposed these plans. In November, ballot measures to allow vouchers in Kentucky and Colorado failed, while voters in Nebraska voted to repeal a voucher program put into place by the legislature.

But the federal plan enjoys robust support from the most powerful people in today’s Republican Party. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to create a federal school choice program. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) have both co-sponsored versions of the voucher legislation.

There goes the separation of church and state. There goes common sense. Voucher programs don’t help students. They hurt public schools, which enroll the vast majority of students. Vouchers are a huge drain on the budget.

Why should taxpayers pay tuition for wealthy families? Why should taxpayers underwrite tuition at schools that discriminate against students for any reason they want, be it race, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, or low test scores? If public schools did that, their test scores would be sky-high, but it would betray the promise of public schools: equal educational opportunity. Not for only those we choose to admit.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Racism, Religion, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

John Thompson: We Must Revive Civics Education

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
9

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, reviews a book about how to teach civics in this era.

He writes:

Lindsey Cormack’s How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It) “offers an engaging and practical approach to discussing political issues and the inner workings of the U.S. government with children.” And guess what? How to Raise a Citizen doesn’t dump the entire challenge on schools and educators, as was the norm for corporate school reformers! She presents “a tool for parents, educators, and anyone eager to fill this gap.”

Cormack explains that, “Nationwide assessments reveal that civic knowledge hasn’t improved since 1998, and “Scores on Advanced Placement government tests are consistently among the lowest across all AP offerings.”

Cormack pushes back on the 21st century test-driven, competition-driven ideology which demanded that individual teachers must be accountable for data-driven, supposedly transformative change.  How to Raise a Citizen calls for mindsets which the Billionaires Boys Club insisted were “excuses” made by teachers with “low expectations.” She writes that “we need parents to play a key role, and to support integrating civics into every grade, starting early and building on concepts just like we do with other subjects.” Cormack challenges society to:

Imagine if parents took on this role by discussing government and politics at the dinner table, encouraging their children to ask questions and showing them how to get involved in community and local government activities.

Cormack then explains, “We need parents to play a key role, and to support integrating civics into every grade, starting early and building on concepts just like we do with other subjects.”

Both parents and educators should first focus on young children, helping them build a “vocabulary and awareness of governmental structures.” Then they should help middle schoolers and high schoolers to “handle broader concepts and ideas” so they “can and do engage in community involvement.”

By high school, there should be a team effort for “turning theory into action.” Cormack explains, “Experts agree that a high-quality civic education requires ‘action civics,’ in which students learn by doing rather than just reading. Simulations of elections, legislative hearings and courtroom activities are examples of active learning shown to be impactful and memorable.”

A resource to enhance history and civics programs explores national, state, and local elections and offers diffe…

I am struck by three points that Cormack makes. First, the adults should guide efforts where the goal is deep learning about the political process, not politicizing lessons by guiding outcomes favored by one political group or another.

Secondly, this reprioritization of active learning “has to happen day in and day out, during presidential election years and all others.” Committing to this, we can raise a generation of informed, active citizens ready to take on the challenges of our democracy.

Thirdly, she makes a case for hopefulness.

How to Raise a Citizen reminds me about the ways my high school students and I taught each other how to actively participate in our democracy. My principal knew that I would refuse to follow vertically aligned curriculum pacing guides which teachers were supposed to obey so that we would “all be on the same page” regarding the teach-to-the-test schedule.  Our class’ schedule for teaching state “Standards,” as opposed to standardized tests, was different whenever there was a presidential or mid-term election, or when state or local politics took over the headlines, or when extreme events, like the Murrah Building bombing, 9/11, or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan occurred.    

I would “horizontally” align our civics and/or history lessons in terms of what was being taught in other classes, and events in the community. For instance, when English classes started reading Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, I would teach about Ellison’s experiences growing up in Oklahoma City, such as the cruel joke that was played on him that inspired the famous “Battle Royal” scene.

Our inner city students’ reading levels ranged from 2nd grade to college levels. We would use graphs, photos, audio and film clips, and other interventions to help all of them comprehend challenging concepts. Above all, they saw high-level instruction as a sign of respect, and responded by learning how to learn in a holistic and meaningful way.  

The students were especially insightful when guest lecturers visited, and during field trips to places like art museums, “Deep Deuce,” where Ellison grew up, and the state Capitol. This was especially true when a veteran of the Sit-In movement joined us in repeated trips to the Capitol. Legislators were always enthralled by the students’ wisdom.  

When teaching abortion rights, I would reveal to my students, who mostly held anti-abortion beliefs, that I had been a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, but everyone was free to their own opinion. I told them that I preferred the role of a teacher and referring to students as “pro-life,” as opposed to calling them “anti-choice,” which had been my job as a lobbyist.

Students frequently were more conservative than me regarding social issues, and some would come to class a day after a stimulating discussion, and pass on responses made by their parents or grandparents when they discussed our lessons from the previous day. One even brought his preacher to class, resulting in a diverse and meaningful conversation.  And since I taught with the door open, parents walking down the hall would come in and join the discussions.

For instance, one father overheard our lesson on the Tulsa Massacre, which then was called the “Tulsa Race Riot.” He asked the class what name the massacre should be given, and then shifted gears and taught a lesson about anti-Jewish Pogroms. The kids figured out what he meant and shouted, “The Tulsa Pogrom!”

The next day, he came back and gave us a photo of Malcolm X shaking Martin Luther King’s hand, and taught a lesson on the Booker T. Washington to Malcolm X tradition and the W.E.B. DuBois to Martin Luther King tradition. (Clara Luper, the leader of the nation’s longest lasting Sit-In movement, did almost the same thing in another class; the students were thrilled when she challenged me by saying the Malcolm X tradition deserved respect but I shouldn’t give it respect equal to the MLK tradition.)

And that brings me to Cormack’s third basic point, bringing hope that schools, families, and communities can come together and nurture a commitment to civics education, and a 21st century democracy. A few years ago, I would have seen her optimism as a self-evident truth. Now, I worry that our failures to teach civics and history have helped undermine our society’s commitment political institutions. But, I try to focus on cross-generational and cross-cultural conversations. Cormack’s book, and memories of my students’ successes, restore my hope that we can push back against systemic challenges, and, as she emailed me, “build pathways for students and schools to thrive.”

Categories Civics, Curriculum, Education Reform, Ethics, Teaching

Thom Hartmann: The GOP Plan to Cut Social Security

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
13

Despite the multiple pledges by Trump and Republicans that they would never custodial Security, don’t believe them. Republicans opposed Social Security when it was created by FDR, and many still thinks it’s socialism, even though it’s not a handout. People have paid for it throughout their working like.

Thom Hartmann says they are looking for ways to cut Social Security but to do it quietly, so you hardly notice. Trump’s Chief budget-cutter Elon Musk doesn’t understand why anyone needs Social Security. He was recently interviewed by Joe Rogan and said that Social Security is “a Ponzi scheme.” It certainly is not. It’s not a grifter’s scheme to take people’s money. It pays out to everyone. Without it, very large numbers of older people would be impoverished.

Why would the world’s richest man know or care?

Hartmann warned:

The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway right before our eyes: who will stop them? 

The GOP’s plan to make Americans hate Social Security is well along in its execution. Their scheme — which they’ve been advancing in small increments for 44 years — is brilliantly simple: break the agency’s ability to respond to taxpayers, causing people to have to wait on the phone or travel for hours to stand in line for hours.

As complaints mount, Republicans will then point to the “broken Social Security Administration” and pitch a Medicare Advantage-like alternative: privatized “Social Security Advantage,” run by the big New York banks who are reliable GOP donors. Once a critical mass of seniors have moved from SS to the new privatized program, they’ll then just shut down legacy Social Security, arguing that “the free marketplace has spoken.”

The key to accelerating the process (Social Security’s administrative staff has been far too small for decades since Reagan first started cutting it) is a new demand from Trump’s acting Social Security Commissioner that the agency cut its workforce by fully fifty percent. Once that happens, all bets are off; the agency may not even be able to get checks out in a timely manner or process applications for new benefits, much less help SS recipients sign up or solve problems they may encounter.

As Congressman John Larson noted: “This is nothing more than a backdoor benefit cut and an insult to Americans who have paid into the system and earned their Social Security—all to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy.” 

Social Security Works president Nancy Altman was blunt: “Field offices around the country will close. Wait times for the 1-800 number will soar.” Larson added: “Let me be clear—laying off half of the workforce at the Social Security Administration and shuttering field offices will mean the delay, disruption, and denial of benefits.”

Meanwhile, Idaho’s Republican Senator Mike Crapo blocked Bernie Sanders’ attempt this week to give all seniors on Social Security a $2400 annual raise. Noting that the raise would be paid for by having people earning more than $250,000 a year start paying Social Security taxes on all their income above that amount (which is currently exempt from Social Security taxes), Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (a co-sponsor of the legislation) said, “The Social Security Expansion Act will protect the national treasure that is Social Security by extending the trust fund’s solvency for 75 years and expanding benefits by $2,400 a year so that everyone in America can retire with the security and dignity they deserve after a lifetime of hard work.”

But big banks and the morbidly rich object, and they own the GOP…

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Poverty, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Trump Punishes Two Law Firms that Crossed Him

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2025 //
23

In a startling display of pettiness and vengeance, Trump lashed out at two law firms that dared to represent his critics. This is not normal. Law firms don’t get punished because of whom they represent. But to Trump, everything is personal. Anyone who is not on his side is an enemy. Anyone who represents his enemy is his enemy and should expect vengeance to rain down on them.

The New York Times reported:

President Trump signed an executive orderon Thursday seeking to severely punish the law firm Perkins Coie by stripping its lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings and officials — a form of payback for its legal work for Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign.

With the order, Perkins Coie becomes the second such firm to be targeted by the president. Late last month, he signed a similar memorandum attacking Covington & Burling, which has done pro bono legal work for Jack Smith, who as special counsel pursued two separate indictments of Mr. Trump.

While the Covington memorandum sought to strip clearances and contracts from that firm, the Perkins Coie order goes much further, seeking to also limit its lawyers’ access to federal buildings, officials and jobs in a way that could cast a chilling effect over the entire legal profession.

The president’s animosity toward Perkins Coie dates back eight years, to when two lawyers at the firm, Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, played roles in what eventually became an F.B.I. investigation to determine if anyone on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign conspired with Russian agents to influence the outcome of that election. Both lawyers left that firm years ago.

If Trump had his way, any newspaper or network or cable station that criticized him would lose its license, any TV journalist or writer would lose their job. Any criticism of him would be banned. Anyone who abetted a critic would be punished.

There are words for such behavior: censorship. Fascist. Dictator. Thin-skinned. Authoritarian.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Shame, Trump

Trump Team Sows Disruption, Fear at NIH

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2025 //
5

In Trump’s chaotic effort to weaken and shred the federal government, no agency is immune, not even the National Institutes of Health, a world-class scientific research institution.

The Washington Post published an overview of the dizzying changes there. The #2 person in the agency was expected to be chosen as Acting Director, but he was passed over for a little-known staff member, who was known for opposing the views of Dr. Fauci during the pandemic. And that was just the start.

The NIH has 6,200 scientists on staff. It is a huge biomedical grant-making machine that dispenses funding to some 2,500 research organizations across the nation.

Science writers Carolyn Y. Johnson and Joel Achenbach reported:

In just six weeks, the Trump administration overturned NIH’s leadership, slowed its main mission of identifying the best new science to fund and silenced personnel at the biggest sponsor of biomedical research in the world — a nearly $48 billion enterprise that supports the work of some 300,000 external scientists.
“It’s terrible. It’s awful. People are afraid to open their emails,” one NIH senior scientist said….

Even in a climate of fear, NIH employees say they want to protect their institution. They worry this winter of disruption may be causing lasting damage to the way science is conducted in the United States.

“The whole thing could just disappear,” said Phil Murphy, senior investigator and chief of the laboratory of molecular immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “The biomedical research enterprise in the United States depends largely on NIH dollars. You take the dollars away, the labs go away, and you lose the next generation of scientists.”

I wonder if Dr. Phil Murphy might soon be replaced by a graduate student in political science for his remarks. Or a college dropout on the DOGE team.

In normal times, thousands of scientists on the 320-acre campus conduct basic research on problems such as ALS and heart disease. Clinicians at the research hospital care for patients in cutting-edge clinical trials. Much of this work continued.

But then came a hiring freeze, a travel ban, a communications pause and cancellations of routine grant-review meetings. Scientists were even told they could not purchase the basic lab supplies needed to keep experiments going…

Trump’s executive orders to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as well as programs that support “gender ideology,” forced officials to scan the agency for activities, websites, grants and programs that might need to be modified or pulled down..

In the second week, NIH staff members were told by their new director that they could resume work on clinical trials for new drugs.

But senior officials were grappling with a jaw-dropping memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget that called for a pause on federal grant activity — one of NIH’s main reasons to exist.

This order seemed to encompass most activities that spread NIH grants across the country, including making research awards, evaluating the most meritorious scientific proposals and even just continuing the funding of existing projects that needed renewal.

Lawsuits were filed, and NIH employees found themselves whipsawed between administration policies and court orders.

On Jan. 29, Tabak wrote a note to colleagues asking them to prepare a summary of activities related to the executive orders on diversity and on sex as a biological variable, as well as efforts to bring them into compliance.

Did this mean a ban on trials that compared how different groups reacted to experimental drugs?

Meanwhile a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze NIH funding. But they didn’t.

Then came the biggest blow yet: Late that afternoon, NIH officials were caught off guard by a request from HHS chief of staff Heather Flick Melanson and principal deputy chief of staff Stefanie Spear to post a document immediately.

HHS declared that henceforth NIH would cap at 15 percent the indirect cost rates, or “overhead,” in funding it sends to research institutions. As NIH officials read the notice, they realized it was a seismic shift in policy that would threaten the foundation of biomedical research in the United States.

Reforms to the indirect-costs policy had been debated over the years. There had long been an argument that the cost of helping universities and medical centers pay for “facilities and administrative costs” had gotten out of hand. Indirect rates were sometimes 50 percent or higher, meaning that a research grant supporting a $100,000 scientific project would come with another $50,000 in indirect funding.

The notice made several references to an analysis from a Heritage Foundation white paper, titled “Indirect Costs: How Taxpayers Subsidize University Nonsense.”

As NIH officials worked to post the notice, HHS officials grew impatient with every passing minute. Hurry up, they demanded, according to multiple officials familiar with the events. The conflict was first reported by the Atlantic.

“We [NIH] had nothing to do with it, and this was a really totally inappropriate thing that was foisted upon us with no warning,” one official with knowledge of the notice said. A change like this typically would have been carefully reviewed for weeks before it was posted.

It went live on the NIH website in about an hour.

Many universities responded that they would not be able to cover the cost of hosting major scientific research or experiments with only 15% of the overhead covered.

The cap of 15 percent on indirect costs was temporarily halted by a court as well.

An internal memo that same day from the office of general counsel… stated, in bold font: “All payments that are due under existing grants and contracts should be un-paused immediately.”

But a day later, nothing had changed.
“We have (like you all) been struggling with specific issues that would benefit from discussion on Thursday — even if we don’t have firm guidance,” NIAID Director Jeanne Marrazzo wrote in an email to other leaders on Feb. 11. Among the issues: “When can we anticipate being able to issue awards?”

In a leadership meeting that week, officials discussed an alarming new legal concern: The indirect-costs cap NIH had posted on Friday could put staff at risk of violating the Antideficiency Act, according to multiple people present for the discussion. The law prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

Leaders were concerned that individual grant managers could face criminal charges for doing their jobs…

With veteran leaders… gone, NIH scientists braced for mass firings as the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Agency implemented a plan to terminate probationary employees across the government. On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, more than a thousand such employees at NIH awaited their fates. Some received a chilling email:
“You have been identified as an employee on a probationary period and may receive a letter today from HHS informing you that you will be terminated and/or placed on admin leave.”

The wait proved excruciating. The termination notices didn’t arrive until the weekend.

The agency reeled from losing nearly 1,200 NIH staff in the government-wide firing of probationary workers. So rattled were employees that many believed a rumor that all the institute’s leaders were about to be fired, a total decapitation of NIH bosses. That didn’t happen….

Thousands of grant proposals from outside scientists, often representing months of work, were stuck in the pipeline — essentially freezing the future of American science. Through an arcane bureaucratic pause, dozens of meetings that are key parts of the review process were canceled that week.

Then came the Musk email, asking people to list five things they did last week. Then came the email telling people to ignore the previous email. Then came the same Musk email: respond or quit.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, the eminent former director of NIH, announced that he was resigning from the laboratory where he had worked for almost four years.

The Boston Globe reported that NIH had abruptly terminated grants at mid-point in Massachusetts and across the country.

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Islandand Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

Chaos? Disruption?

It’s fair to say that the masterminds behind this fiasco are either stupid or malevolent or both.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Disruption, Health, Ignorance, Science, Stupid

Trump Removes Human Resource Officers, Will Replace Them with Loyalists

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2025 //
3

Trump often complained that the Biden administration had “weaponized” the Justice Department to persecute him. He has terminated everyone who had a role in the prosecution of federal charges against him. The boxes of classified documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago were returned to him.

So now he is actively politicizing the HR departments across the government. Most of those jobs were held by nonpartisan civil servants. They will be ousted and replaced with people loyal to Trump. The current occupants of these jobs are being punished for implementing the Biden administration’s DEI policies.

Government Executive reports:

The Trump administration continued its efforts to politicize the upper echelons of the federal civil service Thursday, instructing agencies to reclassify chief human capital officer positions to allow political appointees to fill those roles.

The Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to agency heads Thursday recommending that all agencies where CHCOs are career-reserved positions—meaning only a career member of the Senior Executive Service can fill the post—request to change that designation to “SES general,” which allows either career executives or political appointees to assume the job. The federal government’s HR agency set a deadline of March 24 for agencies to comply.

In the memo, Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell argued that CHCO jobs have “become intensely politicized in recent years,” referring to the Biden administration’s efforts to boost diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

“It is hard to imagine a more vivid example of advocacy of the ‘major controversial policies of the administration’ than an HR leader and policymaker implementing and embedding DEIA policies throughout their agency and the government more broadly,” Ezell wrote. “By contrast, President Trump campaigned vehemently against government DEI programs.”

Although only a portion of CHCO positions are actually career-reserved, federal agencies have moved toward employing nonpartisan civil servants in those roles over the last two decades because of the technical expertise required. The move to re-politicize the CHCO corps comes just weeks after the Trump administration took similar action regarding chief information officers across government.

The memo’s publication comes just days after Traci DiMartini, human capital officer for the Internal Revenue Service, was put on leave Monday for alleged “ineffective management” of the administration’s implementation of the deferred resignation program and purge of recently hired, transferred or promoted employees, as well as “insubordination” toward DOGE operatives.

“That they’re accusing human capital officers of being partisan because we implemented DEIA under the Biden administration is so counterproductive to their own argument,” DiMartini said. “Our job is to follow the law and help implement the policies and programs of whoever is in charge.”

To DiMartini and other CHCOs, the memo reads as a pretext to getting rid of officials who refuse to circumvent laws governing the civil service.

“They’re trying to politicize human capital,” DiMartini said. “They want to be able to hire only loyalists, ignore Title 5 [of the U.S. Code] and commit flagrant prohibited personnel practices. When you look at the Merit Systems Protections Board and what the civil protections are, we’re supposed to have a nonpartisan civil service, and we have been completely whipsawed.”

“I think I just got a reverse two-week notice,” one currently serving CHCO told Government Executive.

DiMartini said that she believes her impending termination—the agency has indicated that it will not allow her to retire—stems from two incidents. The first was a refusal to call employees, who she said were already putting in “60-70 hour” work weeks—into the office over the weekend to onboard a DOGE operative.

And the second was mentioning that OPM had directed the probationary purge across government in a meeting intended to calm IRS workers. Unbeknownst to her, an employee had recorded the conversation, and her comments appeared in filings of a lawsuit seeking to overturn the probationary firings.

DiMartini said that although she doesn’t plan to return to government, she will challenge her firing. She said she has never been disciplined in her 21 years of service, and wants to preserve her professional reputation.

“As an SES-er, it’s my job to stand up and be the buffer between politicals and career employees, and I’m just trying to do my goddamn job,” she said. “They have no idea who they picked a f***ing fight with.”

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Race, Trump

“We Were the Efficiency Team, and DOGE Fired Us!”

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2025 //
9

The team of young vandals assembled by Elon Musk have been given free rein to fire anyone and break contracts for any reason or no reason. They spend a few hours in a Department or agency and decide on the spur of the moment whose career to terminate, without regard to experience or knowledge. What will be left of our government when Musk and his kiddies put down their chainsaw?

In one agency that was shuttered, the team is fighting back. This is their story:

March 1, 2025

A letter to the American People:

For over 11 years, 18F has been proudly serving you to make government technology work better. We are non-partisan civil servants. 18F has worked on hundreds of projects, all designed to make government technology not just efficient but effective, and to save money for American taxpayers.

However, all employees at 18F – a group that the Trump Administration GSA Technology Transformation Services Director called “the gold standard” of civic tech – were terminated today at midnight ET.

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated.

When former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd took the position of TTS director and met with TTS including 18F on February 3, 2025, he acknowledged that the group is the “gold standard” of civic technologists and that “you guys have been doing this far longer than I’ve been even aware that your group exists.” He repeatedly emphasized the importance of the work, and the value of the talent that the teams bring to government.

Despite that skill and knowledge, at midnight ET on March 1, the entirety of 18F received notice that our positions had been eliminated.

The letter said that 18F “has been identified as part of this phase of GSA’s Reduction in Force (RIF) as non-critical”.

“This decision was made with explicit direction from the top levels of leadership within both the Administration and GSA,” Shedd said in an email shortly after we were given notice.

This was a surprise to all 18F staff and our agency partners. Just yesterday we were working on important projects, including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS, and other critical projects with organizations at the federal and state levels.

All 18F’s support on that work has now abruptly come to a halt. Since the entire staff was also placed on administrative leave, we have been locked out of our computers, and have no chance to assist in an orderly transition in our work. We don’t even have access to our personal employment data. We’re supposed to return our equipment, but can’t use our email to find out how or where.

Dismantling 18F follows the gutting of the original US Digital Service. These cuts are just the most recent in a series of a sledgehammer approach to the critical US teams supporting IT infrastructure.

Before today’s RIF, DOGE members and GSA political appointees demanded and took access to IT systems that hold sensitive information. They ignored security precautions. Some who pushed back on this questionable behavior resigned rather than grant access. Others were met with reprisals like being booted from work communication channels.

We’re not done yet.

We’re still absorbing what has happened. We’re wrestling with what it will mean for ourselves and our families, as well as the impact on our partners and the American people.

But we came to the government to fix things. And we’re not done with this work yet.

More to come.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty

Robert Hubbell: Never Give Up! Now is the Time to Resist!

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2025 //
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Robert Hubbell is a blogger with a huge following. He has that following because he is well-informed, reasonable and optimistic about the power of democracy. In the absence of any coordinated response from the Democratic Party, protests are occurring spontaneously and locally. At Tesla showrooms, where people are picketing. At town hall meetings, which Republicans have suspended. And in other public settings, where people are expressing their anger and frustration about the dismantling of their government.

He wrote recently:

It is a tough time to be an ordinary American who believes in democracy, the rule of law, and the value of good government. From the cheap seats, it appears that all three are under a brutal assault from Trump and Musk designed to weaken America as a global force for good. In a bizarre twist worthy of The Twilight Zone, Trump and Musk’s campaign of destruction seems carefully crafted to benefit the world’s worst dictator and sworn enemy of American democracy, Vladimir Putin, a goal that is warmly embraced by a party that only a decade ago wrapped itself in patriotism and pro-democracy foreign policy.

But America’s political and media classes seem oddly unconcerned and detached from reality. True, Democrats in Congress express concern—but in the same way, they express concern about policy fights over revisions to the tax code. (To be fair, a handful of notable exceptions are out on a limb without the support of their party.) Our Democratic leaders use their minority status in Congress to justify their strange quiescence—an explanation that accepts defeat as the status quo.

The media is a husk of its former self. Firebrands and self-styled crusaders who took Biden to task for every inconsequential verbal slip now report on grotesque lies and unprecedented betrayals by Trump with the ennui of a weatherman predicting increasing darkness in the late afternoon and early evening.

What is wrong with these people?…

Is the failure of Democratic leaders a lack of ability? Of desire? Or the triumph of personal ambition regarding 2028 presidential politics over their willingness to serve as a leader of the loyal opposition in our nation’s hour of need?

The silence is deafening. There is a grand disconnect. I had no answer for Americans abroad wondering why the deep pool of talented politicians in the Democratic Party was missing in action at a moment of crisis for their beloved country. But I was able to assure them that the grassroots movement is responding to the call without waiting for politicians to lead the way. 

Organic protests are spreading across the US, including protests targeting Tesla dealerships. See News24, ‘We are taking action’: 9 people arrested at Tesla dealership as anti-Musk protests break out in US. (“Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida; Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs . . . .”)

Like the Civil Rights Era in the 20th Century and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, we are experiencing a moment in our history where the people drag their leaders kicking and screaming into the future—at which point those reluctant leaders will take credit for victory. So be it. We must stop asking, “Where are our leaders?” and start doing the work until they show up to join us on the front lines.

The pattern behind Trump’s embrace of Putin in Friday’s Oval Office meeting

On Friday, Trump ended 80 years of alliance between Western nations by attacking and dishonoring the leader of the European nation on the frontlines of the effort to halt Russian expansionism. As Trump berated President Zelensky, Trump characterized himself and Vladimir Putin as “co-victims” of the US investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The next day, Elon Musk agreed with a tweet asserting that the US should leave NATO and the UN.

When European leaders met on Sunday in a pre-planned security conference in London, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev condemned the meeting as an “anti-Trump Russophobic coven [of witches].” Medvedev speaks for Putin.

On Sunday, the NYTimes reported that the US Department of Defense has unilaterally ceased cyber operations against Russia, hobbling the US’s ability to understand Russia’s true intentions at a critical juncture in world politics.

Late last week, The Guardian reported that the US no longer views Russian cyberattacks against the US as a priority. See The Guardian, Trump administration retreats in fight against Russian cyber threats. There is no indication that Russia has stopped cyberattacks against the US or that it has “de-prioritized” American cyberattacks on Russia.

In the span of 72-hours, Trump effectively surrendered to Russia in a cyberwar that has been waged continuously for decades. Trump’s disgraceful actions in the Oval Office on Friday must be viewed in the broader context of Trump’s embrace of Russia.

The media is failing to tell that broader story by trivializing a foreign relations debacle into a “Will he, or won’t he?” story about Trump’s ludicrous demand for Zelensky to “apologize.” See BBCr eport, Laura Kuenssberg, asking Zelensky if he would “express[] some regret to President Trump after your heated confrontation at the White House on Friday.”

At least the BBC reporter didn’t ask Zelensky if he would resign, which has become the new talking point for MAGA politicians in the US: Following Trump’s Lead, His Allies Lash Out At Zelenskyy And Suggest He May Need To Resign | HuffPost Latest News

DOGE hackers shut down key IT unit designed to coordinate US government public-facing computer networks

DOGE has summarily dismantled a key information technology group at the center of the federal government’s public-facing computer systems. See Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, In-House Gov Tech Unit for State of the Art Web Portals Disbanded by Doge.

The unit that was disbanded was known as “18F.” Its job was to make public-facing websites of the federal government more user-friendly and functional—things like making it easier to complete and file your tax returns for free on the IRS website. 

The now-former employees of 18F published a letter on Sunday that explained what they did and why their dissolution will hurt the American people. See 18F: We are dedicated to the American public and we’re not done yet. The letter reads, in part, as follows:

[The terminations were] a surprise to all 18F staff and our agency partners. Just yesterday we were working on important projects, including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS, and other critical projects with organizations at the federal and state levels.

All 18F’s support on that work has now abruptly come to a halt. Since the entire staff was also placed on administrative leave, we have been locked out of our computers, and have no chance to assist in an orderly transition in our work. . . .

Before today’s RIF, DOGE members and GSA political appointees demanded and took access to IT systems that hold sensitive information. They ignored security precautions. Some who pushed back on this questionable behavior resigned rather than grant access.

The chaos-termination of the 18F computer group is being repeated across the federal government. Doge has apparently targeted 50% of the Social Security Administration staff—a move that will hurt service levels for seniors who depend on SSA payments to meet basic living expenses.

These cuts are painful and will cause chaos. That chaos and pain will spur a backlash against Republicans that should allow Democrats to take back the House (and possibly the Senate) in 2026 if only the Democratic Party can get its act together—PRONTO! We need a daily news conference with effective messaging by dynamic, charismatic leaders who are not Chuck Schumer!…

Concluding Thoughts

Apologies that this newsletter is more like a rant and less like my usual call to action. But I am reflecting the frustration and anger that I am hearing from readers (both in person and in the Comment section). There seems to be a disconnect that is exacerbating an already mind-boggling situation.

The good news is that everyone seems to “get it”—other than politicians and the media. As I noted, they will be dragged along with the tide of history—a tide whose course we will determine by our actions.

It is up to us to save democracy—a situation that does not distinguish this moment from the thousands of perilous moments that have brought us to this point.

I acknowledge that we are living through an extraordinarily difficult moment. Our most important task is to not quit. If all we do is endure and keep hope alive, that will be enough. That is what Winston Churchill did during the darkest hours of WWII. If we can do the same, we will see victory in 2026 and 2028.

But we can do more—much more. The tide is turning. Republicans are retreating from their constituents. Spontaneous protests are spreading across America. It is happening. Be part of the movement in whatever way you can. No effort is wasted. No gesture is meaningless. No voice is unheard. Everything matters—now more than ever.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Resistance, Trump, Tyranny

Peter Greene: DeSantis Wants More School Shootings, More Death

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2025 //
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Peter Green explores one of the strangest paradoxes of our time: how can people be “pro-life” and also oppose any gun control? Guns kill people. Guns kill thousands of people every year. Consistency would demand that a person who is pro-life would also want to regulate the sale of guns.

But no. Among the most zealous pro-life governors is Ron DeSantis of Florida. He doesn’t want any woman to get an abortion, regardless of the peril to her life or the fetus. But when it comes to guns, DeSantis wants everyone to have at least one.

Green writes:

This week in his State of the State speech, Ron DeSantis announced that it was time to get over the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting–that would be the one in Parkland in which a 19-year-old killed 17 and injured 17 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history. 

After that shooting, the state put in place a piddly excuse for an attempt to make such horrors less likely, but even that is too much for DeSantis, who specifically wants to get rid of language raising the age to purchase a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21 and also the red flag law that lets family members or law enforcement petition the court to remove someone’s firearms id they are risk to themselves of others. You know– like maybe a 19 year old with a long history of racism and fascination with mass shootings. “We need to be a strong Second Amendment state. I know many of you agree, so let’s get some positive reform done for the people in this state of Florida,” DeSantis was quoted by the Florida Phoenix. 

Also, he’d like to have open carry in the state.

Because nothing is more important than an American’s God-given right to shoot other people. Because we should go to any length to “protect” a fetus, but once it’s a live child, its life is less important than someone’s right to fire off a couple of rounds at anyone that bugs them. Because this is one more way politicians can show that for all their talk, they don’t particular care about young humans. 

On the right column of the blogspot version of this blog, I have had one image parked for years. It’s not complicated

I would say that it’s the least we could do, but of course the least we can do is nothing, and Ron DeSantis would like us to get back to doing that. 

The only bright spot here is that the legislature doesn’t seem to have his back on this. Good. DeSantis should be ashamed that he can’t even produce a bad argument for his favored policies other than complaining that Florida has “lagged on this issue.” What a bummer– imagine all the people who are going to some other state because it’s easier to shoot people there. 

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Guns, Health

Heather Cox Richardson: Bloody Sunday and Voting Rights

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2025 //
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In this post, historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us of the struggle to secure voting rights for Black Americans, as she commemorates the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” For most people, these stories are history. For me, because I am old, they are memories. in my lifetime, Black voters across the South were disenfranchised. People who advocated for civil rights, the right to vote, and racial equality put their lives at risk in the South. The KKK was active. Black churches were bombed. Civil rights leader Medger Evers was murdered while standing in his driveway.

The struggle for equal rights was violent and bloody. Yet today, we are told by our President and his allies that we shouldn’t talk about these parts of the past. It’s not patriotic. It’s “woke.” It’s DEI. It’s divisive. Let’s not talk about race anymore. Let’s all be colorblind. That’s what Dr. King wanted, wasn’t it? Cue the quote about being judged by “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” No, that’s not what he wanted. He spoke hopefully about a future where no one was disadvantaged by the color of their skin. Where everyone had the same and equal rights. Where racism and prejudice no longer existed.

But that’s not the society we live in today. We live in a society where people of color and women are openly disparaged by the President as “DEI hires.” When race and gender are no longer reasons to belittle and demean people, then we can judge everyone by the content of their character. But that day has not arrived.

Heather Cox Richardson writes:

Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but the measure did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

To call attention to the crisis in her city, Amelia Boynton, a member of the Dallas County Voters League acting with a group of local activists, traveled to Birmingham to invite Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to the city. King had become a household name after delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.

King and other prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in January to push the voter registration drive. For seven weeks, Black residents tried to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.

Then on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson died eight days later, on February 26.

The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

On March 7, 1965, sixty years ago today, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.

Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.

On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

The marchers remained determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, but Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them. So President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1,900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.

On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recalling “the outrage of Selma,” Johnson said: “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”

The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

As recently as 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by a bipartisan vote. By 2008 there was very little difference in voter participation between white Americans and Americans of color. In that year, voters elected the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, and they reelected him in 2012. And then, in 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision struck down the part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval from the federal government before changing their voting rules. This requirement was known as “preclearance.”

The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. A 2024 study by the Brennan Center of nearly a billion vote records over 14 years showed that the racial voting gap is growing almost twice as fast in places that used to be covered by the preclearance requirement. Another recent study showed that in Alabama, the gap between white and Black voter turnout in the 2024 election was the highest since at least 2008. If nonwhite voters in Alabama had voted at the same rate as white voters, more than 200,000 additional ballots would have been cast.

Democrats have tried since 2021 to pass a voting rights act but have been stymied by Republicans, who oppose such protections. On March 5, 2025, Representative Terri Sewall (D-AL) reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would help restore the terms of the Voting Rights Act, and make preclearance national.

The measure is named after John Lewis, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader whose skull law enforcement officers fractured on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Lewis went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia. Until he died in 2020, Lewis bore the scars of March 7, 1965: Bloody Sunday.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Inequality, Injustice, Justice, Trump
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