Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at New York University and a specialist in autocracy.
She wrote recently on her blog Lucid about some of the ways that Trump is helping Putin achieved his goal of reassembling the whole USSR. Many years ago, Putin said that the collapse of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.” some might have said it was World War I or Wotkd War II. Not Putin, veteran KGB agent.
Ben-Ghiat wrote:
To understand the nature and scope of this momentous shift, it helps to think like an autocrat. For this kind of leader, democratic America, with its robust economy, far-reaching infrastructure of foreign aid, immensely powerful military, and checks on foreign malign influence and corruption initiatives, is a huge problem.
Trump’s path back to power so he could take care of this distressing situation was eased by Chinese, Iranian, and Russian disinformation campaigns, which, together with U.S. Republican propaganda, helped to discredit and weaken American democracy in the eyes of the American public. Trump’s ceaseless efforts to praise foreign strongmen and his delegitimization of democratic institutions, from elections to the free press to the judiciary, also had this aim.
Trump had long ago internalized a view of geopolitics that sees democracies, and American democracy in particular, as hostile actors who deny the rights of autocracies to expand their influence in the world. When Trump suggests that President Joe Biden’s support of Ukraine’s bid to join NATO provoked Russia’s invasion, he justifies the Kremlin’s aggressions as a legitimate response to democratic meddling.
Now that Trump is back in the White House, focused on the destruction of American democracy, we can expect public collaboration with Russia to take several forms. Trump and his enablers in and outside of the GOP will produce a steady stream of performances and propaganda meant for two audiences: autocrats, especially Putin, and the millions of Americans who still need to be indoctrinated to see the world in ways that benefit Trump and his Kremlin ally.
The novel co-presidency of Trump and Elon Musk has provided a one-two punch approach to quickly launch the other two ways the U.S. will collaborate with Russia. First, by erasing or dialing back America’s global soft and hard power footprint in the world. This could mean reducing military spaces abroad that are now deterrents to autocratic aggression, or using such spaces as launching pads for pro-autocratic military engagements that the US may one day participate in.
It also means ending or scaling back humanitarian assistance programs that have created goodwill for America among global populations. Musk has jump-started this latter action by destroying USAID. The goal is to create a vacuum of American power and influence in the world that China, Russia, Turkey and other autocracies can fill.
The second form of collaboration entails the removal of barriers to the free flow of Russian influence inside America. This was supposed to be a priority of Trump’s first administration. Just months after his inauguration, Trump hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak in the Oval Office, with only a Russian state photographer from TASS present. This told the world that the White House would be a Russian-friendly space with Trump in power, with Kremlin views of politics and the world amplified by Washington.
President Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office, May 10, 2017. Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/via Getty Images.
Then came the Russia investigation —a supreme annoyance made possible by the existence of democracy in America. During the recent meeting with Zelensky, Trump evoked the difficulties this investigation created for Russian capture of the United States, tellingly mentioning the toll it took on Putin–and just as tellingly, alluding to the pressures this obstruction of Putin’s plans placed on him as an ally with responsibilities to fulfill. His statement resembles the “self-criticism” Communist operatives were required to engage in when they displeased the regime.
“Let me tell you. Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said. “He had to suffer through the Russia hoax…He went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt…It was a phony Democrat scam. He had to go through it. And he did go through it.”
This false start, and the heightened expectations for Trump to perform this time, are likely why Trump & Co. have acted so aggressively. In his first weeks in power, Trump signed orders to disband TaskForce KleptoCapture, which targeted Russian oligarchs, disband the FBI’s Foreign Influence Taskforce, and relax enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including digital actions.
The appointment of Tulsi Gabbard, who has a history of taking positions that defend Russian interests, as Director of National Intelligence, is another indication of the will to dismantle obstructions to Russian influence inside America. The walls of the national security fortress are coming down.
In 2018, before the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Trump said that he saw Russia as more of a “competitor” than an “enemy.” Seven years later, that competitor has become an ally. Whatever forms Russia-U.S. collaboration will take, more Americans will come to understand that the man they elected to “save the country” is far more interested in solving Putin’s problems than in governing America. That means wrecking American democracy at home and dismantling American power abroad.
If your head is spinning, you are not alone. Trump issues an executive order, one court overturns it, another restores, another court overturns it. Musk sends a mass email to hundreds of thousands of civil servants, telling them they must respond with a list of five things they did in the past week; their failure to respond will be treated as a resignation. The heads of some agencies tell their employees to ignore Elon’s email. The email is withdrawn. Then the email is distributed again.
If you work for the federal government, this is madness, not good for morale.
Russell Vought, primary author of Project 2025, is now director of the Office of Management and Budget, the nerve center of the federal government. He is a Christian nationalist. He said recently:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”
What’s going on? Chaos. Disruption. A calculated effort to make the government less efficient. Why? I don’t know but I have suspicions.
In recent days, the Trump administration issued a list of more than 400 properties that were for sale. The list included the headquarters of several Departments in D.C.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.
By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”
The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.
The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by Democratic lawmakers and some former federal officials who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.
A spokeswoman for the agency said on Wednesday that officials have received an “overwhelming amount of interest” since releasing the list, and they expect to republish it in the near future after they evaluate initial input. The spokeswoman stressed that it will be continuously reviewed and updated.
The original version of the list included offices of several cabinet-level departments and other large spaces used by the Agriculture Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those were among the buildings removed when the list was whittled down to 320 properties. Still included for possible sale in that version: buildings used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as field offices for the Social Security Administration in areas like western Pennsylvania and Saginaw, Mich.
Federal buildings that were about a million square feet were marked for possible sale in Los Angeles, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Memphis and Kansas City, Mo. In New York City, the properties included offices for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, along with two downtown buildings that house offices for federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service.
Though the properties are not formally listed on the market, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration said Tuesday that the agency would consider and evaluate all serious offers.
Mona Charen was a bona fide rightwing conservative and a syndicated columnist until Trump was elected in 2016. She then became an outspoken Never-Trumper and joined her fellow disillusioned Republicans–which some no longer are–at The Bulwark. The Bulwark is consistently most interesting blog that I read, offering the views of sadder-but-wiser smart people, disillusioned by Trump. Maybe I enjoy because I was in the same place 17 years ago.
In this column, Charen takes Trump’s defenders over the coals. This is not her full column. She also took aim at Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who was one a staunch defender of Ukraine, but turned on a dime when he saw Trump’s disdain for Zelensky. Open the link and read it all.
She writes:
IN 2022, AFTER RUSSIAN TANKS ROLLED across an international border into Ukraine and missiles pierced the quiet of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky earned worldwide acclaim for his courage and heroism. Famously, in response to an American offer of a safe exit, he replied “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” Former President George W. Bush expressed what many were thinking when he declared that Zelensky was the “Winston Churchill of our time.”
But perhaps no one was more pro-Ukrainian than Sen. Lindsey Graham, who exulted in an arrest warrant the Russians had issued against him:
I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor. To know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy. I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory.
Last Friday, after mad king Donald and his scheming viceroy, JD Vance, performed a tag-team ambush on Zelensky in the Oval Office, Graham sounded a different note. “A complete, utter disaster,” he told reporters, which is okay as far as it goes. But then it became clear that he had inverted victim and aggressor. He continued, “Somebody asked me if I was embarrassed about President Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance for standing up for our country.”
Disgusting. A politician whose identity was forged as a hawk and staunch defender of liberty and democracy now praises the most powerful man in the world for sandbagging the beleaguered leader of a bleeding ally, a victim of aggression? That’s standing up for America?
There are still millions of Americans who value loyalty to the country and its values over loyalty to a party that lost all its values. Join us.Join
Ditto Marco Rubio, that gelding who has likewise transformed himself from a champion of freedom into an obedient toady to the man whose project is to destroy the Western alliance.
We live in an upside-down world where the far greater man, Zelensky, is being hounded to apologize to the gangster who behaved abominably.
Consider that even before the Oval Office debacle, Trump and his team had been grossly disrespectful and abusive toward Zelensky and Ukraine. Trump called him a “dictator” (though he declined to say as much about Putin) and lambasted him for failing to hold elections. (It is not permitted under Ukrainian law to hold elections during wartime.) He did not mention Putin’s failure to hold free elections for 25 years. Trump then repeated Putin’s propaganda that Ukraine, not Russia, had started the war. Secretary of Defense (God help us) Pete Hegseth pronounced that it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to win back its own territory. Vance told a European audience that he feared “the threat from within” far more than Russia or China. And then Trump proposed a “deal” that amounted to extortion, demanding the right to mine rare earth elements (which Trump called “raw earths”) on Ukrainian soil in return for . . . nothing. At first, Trump claimed that it was to compensate the United States for aid already donated, and though there were later iterations of the deal—all of which were blown up when Zelensky was ejected from the White House—the essential nature of the proposed agreement was clear. It was a shakedown. As Trump unguardedly admittedwhen he lost his temper, he regards Ukraine as a target for extortion because they “don’t have any cards.” Without the United States, Trump thundered, “you have nothing.”
It was the most shameful moment in American presidential history in at least a century. And while the focus of opprobrium should be on Trump and his smarmy understudy, a special shame also attaches to the explainer class of analysts who, without even the excuse of fearing voters, perform pirouettes on their principles.
AS RECENTLY AS JUNE 2023, Marc Thiessen had seen his role differently—that of guide to help MAGA types remain on side with Ukraine. He outlined an “America First Case for Supporting Ukraine,” arguing that “a Ukrainian victory would help deter China”; that a “Russian victory would further popularize the ‘decline of the West’ narrative, eroding U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia”; and that a Russian victory would “mean more nuclear states and more wars of aggression.”
But now, when the leader has pivoted, so has Thiessen.
ProPublica estimated the number of children who will die–of starvation or lack of medical care–because DOGE closed down USAID. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, in addition to their families, are the direct result of the shuttering foreign aid. These lives don’t matter to Trump and Musk; they are not white. Musk is a well-known pro-catalyst; he thinks women must have more babies. He himself now has 14 children, by different mothers. But he seems to care only about white babies.
Here is a portion of their report:
For weeks, some of the federal government’s foremost authorities on global health have repeatedly warned Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other leaders about the coming death toll if they carried out the Trump administration’s plan to end nearly all U.S. foreign aid around the world.
In their clearest accounting yet, top officials have estimated the casualties: One million children will not be treated for severe acute malnutrition. Up to 166,000 people will die from malaria. New cases of tuberculosis will go up by 30%. Two hundred thousand more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade.
Instead of acting on the repeated warnings, top administration officials, including the State Department’s director of foreign assistance, Peter Marocco, thwarted their own experts’ efforts to keep the U.S. Agency for International Development’s most vital programs up and running, according to internal memos and estimates compiled by global health leaders at the agency and obtained by ProPublica.
President Donald Trump’s political appointees, along with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, pressed ahead with their plan to dismantle USAID by ignoring and impeding staff who tried to protect lifesaving operations — even as the administration publicly insisted that those programs remained online — according to the memos and interviews with government officials.
During exchanges outlined in one of the memos, a DOGE engineer emailed staff and said they were not allowed to review the programs they were canceling. At another point, USAID’s then-deputy chief of staff, Joel Borkert, told agency personnel to take a “draconian” approach to approving waivers.
The explosive memos — which include summaries of email exchanges and top-level meetings inside USAID, as well as internal agency research — were sent by Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health. ProPublica also obtained detailed breakdowns of lifesaving programs managed by the bureau and the projected impact of cutting them. Enrich was placed on leave Sunday.
Enrich told The New York Times he released the memos, which multiple other officials contributed to, after learning he was being placed on leave, as thousands of others at the agency have been. The memos were circulated to the staff and obtained by ProPublica.
The documents identify several key senior policymakers behind the scenes while also puncturing the administration’s claims of a careful, deliberative review of USAID programming. The records also represent the government’s most explicit concerns to date memorialized by a senior official from inside Trump’s administration.
The State Department, USAID and Elon Musk did not respond to questions about this story. Rubio and Marocco did not respond to a request for an interview.
Since the inauguration, Rubio, Musk and Marocco have taken dramatic steps to incapacitate USAID, the largest foreign aid donor in the world, by firing its employees and halting operations. The global health bureau was one of the first parts of the agency targeted for mass layoffs.
Then, last week, they abruptly cancelled 10,000 foreign aid projects, which account for 90% of USAID’s humanitarian operations and about half of the State Department’s. Lifesaving programs that were still operating around the world were forced to close down immediately.
How do you sleep at night, when you know that your actions were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children? And their parents?
The New York Times story that was linked in the story gave more details:
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development is likely to cause enormous human suffering, according to estimates by the agency itself. Among them:
up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths;
200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually, and hundreds of millions of infections;
one million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition, which is often fatal, each year;
more than 28,000 new cases of such infectious diseases as Ebola and Marburg every year.
Those stark projections were laid out in a series of memos by Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D., which were obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Enrich was placed on administrative leave on Sunday.
This was the opening of Enrich’s bold memo, as reprinted in the New York Times:
Takeaway: The temporary pause on foreign aid and delays in approving lifesaving humanitarian assistance (LHA) for global health will lead to increased death and disability, accelerate global disease spread, contribute to destabilizing fragile regions, and heightened security risks-directly endangering American national security, economic stability, and public health. If the pause leads to permanent contract terminations, the $7.7B in resources appropriated by Congress are no longer be used to support these lifesaving global health programs, which could potentially result in wasted resources. The impacts on mortality and morbidity are summarized in the tables below. While the Foreign Assistance Review is set to take place in the coming weeks, it is important to recognize that a mechanism-by-mechanism approach may overlook the broader impact of these programs across global health program areas. This includes missed opportunities to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness within LHA program areas.
Marco Rubio, how do you feel about the deaths of so many people? Does it trouble you? Can you look in the mirror in the morning without seeing a murderer reflected back to you?
We know that Trump and Musk don’t care. What about you, Mr. Rubio?
Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of diversity, equity and inclusion. His blog is called Cloaking Inequity. He was Provost at Western Michigan State University. He recently stepped down to further his scholarship and advocacy as a professor. Julian is a founding member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
In yet another attempt to weaponize the federal government against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in education, the U.S. Department of Education—at the urging of Moms for Liberty and other far-right extremist groups—has launched the “Stop DEI Portal” (https://enddei.ed.gov).
This taxpayer-funded snitch line is designed to invite anonymous complaints against public schools, colleges, and universities that are actively working to create inclusive and equitable environments for all students. Their goal? To stoke fear, intimidate educators, and dismantle efforts to address racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequities in education.
Let’s be clear: this is not about stopping discrimination—it’s about silencing efforts to eliminate it.
But here’s the thing: if this portal is truly meant to address discrimination, then let’s make sure it serves that purpose.
Let’s Turn the Tables: Report REAL Discrimination
If the Department of Education wants reports of discrimination, let’s give them exactly that. But let’s report real, documented cases of discrimination—the kind that actually harms students and families every single day, especially in underregulated charter and voucher-funded schools.
Here’s what they don’t want reported, but what we should be flooding their portal with:
1. Discrimination Against Students with Disabilities
• Many charter and voucher schools systematically exclude students with disabilities, either by refusing to provide necessary accommodations or pushing them out with discriminatory discipline policies.
• Special education students in voucher programs often lose their federal protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when they transfer to private schools.
• Some schools refuse to admit students who require additional supports, effectively segregating students with disabilities from their peers.
📌 If you or someone you know has experienced this, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov
2. Discrimination Against LGBTQ+ Students
• In some states, charter and private schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers have explicit policies that allow them to deny admission to LGBTQ+ students or expel them for their identity.
• LGBTQ+ students often face harassment, deadnaming, misgendering, and bullying—sometimes by school officials—without intervention.
• Books and curriculum that acknowledge LGBTQ+ history and experiences are being banned, erasing the existence of LGBTQ+ students and families from the classroom.
📌 If you’ve seen LGBTQ+ students being targeted or erased, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov
3. Racial Discrimination and Segregation in Schools
• Many charter and private schools resegregate students by race and income, creating de facto segregation that mirrors the Jim Crow era.
• Black and Brown students face harsher disciplinary actions than their white peers for the same behaviors.
• AP African American Studies, ethnic studies courses, and other curriculum that acknowledges systemic racism are being banned or watered down, denying students an accurate understanding of history.
📌 If you have evidence of racial discrimination in schools, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov
4. Discrimination Against Low-Income Students
• Voucher programs siphon public dollars away from neighborhood schools, making it harder for low-income students to access well-funded, high-quality education.
• Private voucher schools are not required to provide free or reduced-price lunch programs, effectively shutting out students who rely on school meals.
• School choice programs increase economic segregation, allowing affluent families to access better resources while leaving lower-income students in underfunded public schools.
📌 If you know of schools pushing out or underfunding low-income students, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov
Weaponizing the Portal Against Its Own Purpose
The Stop DEI Portal is not about protecting students—it’s about political theater and furthering a radical agenda to dismantle public education.
Conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, the Heritage Foundation, and other well-funded organizations have pushed for Project 2025, a policy plan designed to eliminate federal civil rights protections, dismantle DEI initiatives, and privatize public education.
They want to create a parallel education system where only privileged, wealthy families benefit—while marginalized students are left behind.
What You Can Do Right Now
✅ Step 1: Submit REAL complaints to the Stop DEI Portal
Visit https://enddei.ed.gov and report discrimination against students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and low-income students.
✅ Step 2: Share this far and wide
Encourage educators, parents, and students to flood the portal with real discrimination complaints.
✅ Step 3: Support organizations fighting back
Groups like Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD) and the Network for Public Education (NPE) are exposing the harms of privatization and the discriminatory practices of charter and voucher schools.
✅ Step 4: Stay engaged in the fight to protect public education
The NPE/NPE Action Conference on April 5-6 in Columbus, Ohio is bringing together educators, advocates, and policymakers to discuss how to defend public schools and stop the Project 2025 playbook. I’ll be there.
There’s no time to sit on the sidelines. The Stop DEI Portal is just the beginning of a much larger battle. If we don’t fight back now, the next generation will inherit an education system built on exclusion, discrimination, and privatization.
Let’s make sure the truth is louder than deception.
The Department of Education asked for tips about schools that continued to promote DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and trolls jammed the inbox.
Last Thursday, the Trump Administration announced it would partner with M4L to launch EndDEI.ed.gov, allowing visitors to submit a form to report any “divisive ideologies and indoctrination” within K-12 schools. The press announcement about the website’s launch called school DEI initiatives “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.”
Critics touted the website as a snitch line, with Professor Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania commenting on Bluesky, “I believe Hitler had a program like this…”
The website’s form allows people to submit their email address, the name of the school or school district they want to report, and its ZIP code. It also includes a text entry field enabling people to describe what they’re reporting in less than 450 words, and also a file uploader for images less than 10 MB.
Anyone who has been on the internet long enough could guess how this turned out. It did not take long for people to begin spamming the submission form with memes and other messages ridiculing the government.
One social media user made reports about the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the fictional school of magic featured in the Harry Potter children’s book series.
I reported Hogwarts, Florida extension, for letting in muggles, and Prof. Rowling for being an all-around terrible person. Seems only fair. Note they don’t verify email addresses, so you can use Draco’s. Hypothetically.
One social media user said they disguised a plotline from an X-Men movie as a genuine report. X-Men is a science-fiction comic book superhero series set at Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Its storylines often involve children being kidnapped or sent on dangerous adventures….
Another suggested reporting Elon Musk — the transphobic South African billionaire who has overseen the destruction of federal agencies under Trump — and calling Musk a “DEI hire.” Others suggested using the White House’s ZIP code to report infractions….
One Bluesky user found a major error in the form. Because it counts words instead of characters for its 450-word limit, anyone can override the word limit by avoiding using spaces. As such, one could send entire movie scripts or fan fiction as long as it was condensed into one extremely long word….
Another suggested that they would use this workaround to submit the entire text of My Immortal, a Harry Potter-based fan fiction that was published in serial format between 2006 and 2007….
People also made use of the file upload option in various ways.
Some suggested using the file upload option for more malicious practices, including sending zip bombs, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and other malicious cyber crimes meant to overwhelm computer systems and disable their processing ability.
Of course, the submission of any malicious files on a gov website could be viewed as an attempted cyber attack with serious legal consequences. Other social media users urged individuals outside the U.S. to use a virtual private network (VPN) when submitting a report to help falsely alter their computer’s geo-location data, making their submissions appear more authentic….
PinkNews reported that the “snitch line” website” had shut down. However, it remained online as of the morning of Tuesday, March 4.
The U.S. Department of Education has followed civil rights law since the Department was created in 1979 and began operating in 1980. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates complaints of discrimination against students based on their race, gender, ethnic origin, or disability status.
The Trump administration has flipped the meaning of discrimination and now invites the public to report any examples of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” that they suspect or see. Is it Orwellian? Yes. What was once considered laudable is now labeled as dangerous.
Educators are expected to avoid acknowledging the existence and reality of diversity. They are expected to oppose “equity,” which means that everyone is treated fairly. They must stand up against “inclusion,” that is, welcoming all into activities.
Here is their “tip line,” which you are supposed to call.
U.S. Department of Education Launches “End DEI” Portal
U.S. Department of Education Launches “End DEI” Portal
WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Education launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov, a public portal for parents, students, teachers, and the broader community to submit reports of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly-funded K-12 schools.
The secure portal allows parents to provide an email address, the name of the student’s school or school district, and details of the concerning practices. The Department of Education will use submissions as a guide to identify potential areas for investigation.
“For years, parents have been begging schools to focus on teaching their kids practical skills like reading, writing, and math, instead of pushing critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies—but their concerns have been brushed off, mocked, or shut down entirely,” said Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty. “Parents, now is the time that you share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools. This webpage demonstrates that President Trump’s Department of Education is putting power back in the hands of parents.”
The Office of Communications and Outreach works with national, state, and local educational agencies, programs, and organizations to empower parents and families with information and resources to help them be full partners in their child’s programmatic, education and academic progress.
Contributors: OCO Editorial Team.
Note: This document contains information about and from public and private entities and organizations for the reader’s information. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any entity or organization or the products or services offered, or views expressed. This publication also contains hyperlinks and URLs created and maintained by outside organizations. They are provided for the reader’s convenience; however, the Department is not responsible for the accuracy of this information.
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I didn’t watch Trump last night. The combination of his face, his voice, and his lies is intolerable. I get nausea and a headache. And my soul hurts. I have always loved this country. I am a patriot. And he is destroying it.
With a modesty we have come to expect of him, President Donald Trump informed Congress on Tuesday night that he had already ushered in “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.” He told the assembled lawmakers that he “accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four or eight years.”
Armed with a portfolio of fabricated statistics, Trump judged that “the first month of our presidency is the most successful in the history of our nation — and what makes it even more impressive is that you know who No. 2 is? George Washington.”
Republican lawmakers laughed, whooped and cheered.
Usually, such talk from Trump is just bravado. But let us give credit where it is due: Trump has made history. In fact, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that, over the course of the last five days, he has set the United States back 100 years.
Trump on Monday implemented the largest tariff increase since 1930, abruptly reversing an era of liberalized trade that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War. He launched this trade war just three days after dealing an equally severe blow to the postwar security order that has maintained prosperity and freedom for 80 years. Trump’s ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, followed by the cessation of U.S. military aid to the outgunned ally, has left allies reeling and Moscow exulting. The Kremlin’s spokesman proclaimed that Trump is “rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations” in a way that “largely aligns with our vision.”
And our erstwhile friends? “The United States launched a trade war against Canada, its closest partner and ally, their closest friend,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday. “At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin: a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense.”
It only makes sense if, against all evidence, you believe, as Trump apparently does, that Americans were better off 95 years ago than they are today.
We’re apparently going to have to re-learn that lesson the hard way. The blizzard of executive orders that Trump has issued, though constitutionally alarming, can be rescinded by a future president. Elon Musk’s wanton sabotage of federal agencies and the federal workforce, though hugely damaging, can be repaired over time. But there is no easy fix for Trump’s smashing of the security and trade arrangements that have kept us safe and free for generations. “We’re certainly not in the postwar world anymore,” Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economist and fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, tells me. He calculates that Trump’s hike in tariffs is the largest since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 accelerated the nation’s slide into the Great Depression. And Trump’s current tariffs, which in Irwin’s calculation affect imports worth about 4.8 percent of gross domestic product, will have an even greater impact on the economy than did Smoot-Hawley, which affected imports worth 1.4 percent of GDP, and the McKinley administration’s tariffs during the 1890s, which affected imports worth 2.7 percent of GDP (and which also were followed by a prolonged depression).
Irwin figures the current tariffs “are likely to be much more disruptive” than those historical cases because the U.S. economy is much more dependent now on “intermediate goods” — meaning materials such as auto parts, needed by American businesses to make finished goods. Trump has brought the average tariff on total imports to 10 percent, a level not seen since 1943, in Irwin’s analysis.
Late Tuesday, after stocks plunged for a second day, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to signal a retreat, saying the administration would “probably” announce Wednesday that it was meeting Canada and Mexico “in the middle some way.” Yet even if Trump were quickly to abandon the trade war he just launched, the effects will probably be long-lasting, because he has upended the gradual liberalization of trade that has been underway since 1932.
Trump, in imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, has violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement he negotiated during his first term. “So, going forward, what country would ever sign a trade agreement with the United States knowing that we can find some sort of excuse that’s outside the agreement to raise the tariffs?” Irwin asks. Instead, he expects a return of the “corrupt process” that existed before the 1930s in which tariffs remain on the books and businesses try to curry favor (in this case, with Trump) to win exemptions.
Inevitably, the retaliation has already begun. Canada is imposing 25 percent tariffs on $155 billion of American goods — and the premier of Ontario, vowing to “go back twice as hard” at the United States, is slapping a 25 percent tariff on electricity going to the United States, while threatening to cut the lights off entirely. China is imposing tariffs of up to 15 percent on U.S. imports and banning some exports. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, calling Trump’s justification for the tariffs “offensive, defamatory and groundless,” has said she would announce her country’s retaliation plans this weekend.
And Trump keeps escalating. After Trudeau said on Tuesday that Trump wants “a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that will make it easier to annex us,” Trump mocked “Governor Trudeau” on social media and vowed that “when he puts on a Retaliatory Tariff on the U.S., our Reciprocal Tariff will immediately increase by a like amount!”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 1,300 points. Inflation forecasts are increasing (the free-trading Peterson Institute says Trump’s tariffs will cost the typical American household $1,200 per year). Retailers such as Target and Best Buy are warning about higher prices. The Atlanta Fed’s model of real GDP growth, which a month ago saw 2.3 percent growth in the first quarter, now sees a contraction in the first quarter of 2.8 percent. And Trump is threatening to hit more countries with more tariffs, on metals, cars, farm products and more, in the coming weeks.
During his first term, Trump tweeted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” — but he had the good sense not to test this in a major way. Now, we all get to experience what actually happens when we launch one.
Trump’s moves to dismantle the trade architecture of the last century is all the more destabilizing because he is simultaneously moving to knock down the alliances that maintained security for most of that same period. As The Post’s Francesca Ebel reported from Moscow, Putin’s government sees Trump’s humiliation of Zelensky as a “huge gift” that furthered Russia’s ambitions of dividing the West. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called it a “proper slap down” of “the insolent pig” Zelensky. Hungary’s repressive leader, Viktor Orban, also celebrated: “Thank you, Mr. President!”
And while Trump blames the victim for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China is growing bolder in its desire to take Taiwan. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted analysts calling the Trump-Zelensky rift part of a “systemic reordering” of geopolitics in which “Beijing was positioned to capitalize on the ‘rapid disintegration of the West’ that legitimizes ‘Beijing’s vision for a post-American world order.’”
As the authoritarians celebrate, freedom’s defenders weep. Lech Walesa, the celebrated champion of Polish democracy, joined other former political prisoners in a letter to Trump expressing “horror and disgust” at the American president’s treatment of Zelensky, saying they were “terrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from courtrooms in communist courts.”
Democratic leaders across Europe, and across the world, spoke up in defense of Ukraine. “We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war,” wrote incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz. Now, these democratic leaders must contemplate rebuilding what Trump has destroyed. “Today,” European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas wrote on the day of Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, “it became clear that the free world needs a new leader.” In the House chamber on Tuesday night, there was little sign of the United States that until now has led the free world.
Republicans, once the party of free trade, applauded Trump’s vows to impose tariffs — or additional tariffs — on Canada, Mexico, the European Union, China, India, Brazil and South Korea. “We’ve been ripped off by nearly every country on Earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” he said. As for the pain his trade policies are already causing, he said: “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.” Trump spoke — repeatedly — about his election victory, about the “radical left lunatics” who prosecuted him, and about his culture-war battles against transgender Americans and against “diversity, equity and inclusion.” With taunts and nonsense claims (more than 1 million people over age 150 receiving Social Security!), he goaded the Democrats, who answered him with messages (“False,” “No Kings Live Here”) on signs and on T-shirts. When Al Green, a 77-year-old Democratic lawmaker from Texas, waved his walking cane and shouted at Trump that he had “no mandate to cut Medicaid,” Republican leaders, who allowed members of their party to shout “bulls—” at President Joe Biden from the House floor, called in the sergeant at arms to evict him. It took nearly an hour for Trump to talk about trade. He didn’t get to Ukraine until nearly an hour and 20 minutes into his speech, and then it was to level the false claim that Ukraine had taken $350 billion from the United States, “like taking candy from a baby,” while Europe spent only $100 billion on Ukraine — dramatically overstating the U.S. contribution and understating Europe’s. “Do you want to keep it going for another five years?” he said, looking at the Democrats. “Pocahontas says yes,” Trump added, referring contemptuously to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). At this, Vice President JD Vance chortled — and the Republican side, once the home of proud internationalists, responded with derision, cheers and applause. And so collapses the architecture of freedom and prosperity: with a lie, a taunt and a guffaw.
Tonight, at 9 pm Eastern Time—which is to say, 5 am Wednesday Moscow Time—Co-President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union Address of the Redux. Congressional Democrats must protest this speech like the fate of the nation depends on it—because it does.
The time for traditional party politics has passed. No more “norms.” No more butter knives to gunfights. No more tone-deaf tweets. No more pathetic capitulation. No more infuriating appeals for donations from what’s left of Kamala Harris’s team. We cannot allow Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the anonymous new DNC chair, and the husk of Joe Biden to Merrick Garland our democracy into oblivion.
The Dems must become a true opposition party. Now. Today. A true opposition party recognizes that the real enemy of the people is sitting in the Oval Office, watching a little kid wipe boogers on the Resolute Desk. Since January 20th, Trump and Co-President Elon Musk have quickly consolidated power, causing all sorts of chaos and pain. This will continue until they have transformed this country into the Russian-style oligarchy of their despotic dreams.
They. Want. To. Hurt. Us. And we must stop them. All of us.
The nation is in urgent need of Washington generals—and not the kind who get beat up every night by the Harlem Globetrotters. Kamala Harris must snap out of her post-election funk and reboot the Joyous Warrior. Barack Obama must step away from his Hollywood party circuit and get his manicured hands dirty; Michelle Obama hates this crap, and I don’t blame her, but we need her help now. George W. Bush needs to put down the paintbrush and take up the mantle. Bill and Hillary need to come to the front. Mitt Romney? This ain’t the moment for dressage. Step away from your Dutch warmblood, mount the Warhorse, and ride in with the cavalry.
Since Election Day, the Democrats as a party have been rudderless, weak, and frustratingly out of touch. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the party leadership have been slow to recognize the threat. Hint: look at what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett have been doing, and do that! Or better yet, step down and put them in charge! If the Dems can’t sort this out, and fast, to hell with them. If we have to galvanize behind Liz Cheney, fine, great, let’s do it. We can bicker about policy positions and party planks after the dragon is slain. Right now, we need a leader who isn’t a pusillanimous piece of shit.
On Monday, AOC asked:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social
If you were in Congress, what would you do for the State of the Union? What do you think Dems should do?
All members of Congress who oppose Trump—Democrats, Independents, and whatever Republicans haven’t capitulated—should come to the Capitol at the appointed time. They should have with them a laminated print of that infamous photo from Helsinki, where Trump follows behind Putin subserviently. They should tape the photo to the back of the chair. And as soon as Trump begins to speak, they should all walk noisily out, so that the cameras pan to empty chairs and scores of copies of that embarrassing photo. I wouldn’t object to a crisp “Pu-tin sucks!” chant.
Then, every member of Congress who opposes Trump should repair to his or her office and do a livestream, giving the same speech: a real State of the Union (or State of the Oblast, as it were). This way, every single opposition leader is doing must-see counter-programming simultaneously, to drown out Donald’s hateful lies.
This is what I think they should say:
My fellow Americans, good evening.
What is the state of the Union? Co-President Donald Trump will tell you the state of the Union is strong, but he’s lying, as usual.
Unlike Trump, I’m not going to lie to you. The state of the Union is precarious. It’s precarious and it’s perilous. We are hanging on by a thread. Our democracy is on life support—and Co-President Elon Musk wants to pull the plug and call it “efficiency.”
The Trump/Musk agenda represents a clear and present danger to the people of this country. This threat transcends party politics—like 9/11, like the JFK assassination, like Pearl Harbor. I am speaking to you now not as a Democrat, but as a member of the opposition.
I oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
I oppose the suicidal tariff war Donald has begun with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
I oppose the country descending into dictatorship.
I oppose an unelected, unconfirmed South African weirdo—who can’t be bothered to take off his baseball cap while presiding at their first Cabinet meeting—being granted godlike powers to cut funding, kill programs, and fire hardworking Americans—all at the whim of some half-ass algorithm slapped together by the teenage boys who comprise the workforce at the illegal shadow operation he calls DOGE.
I oppose rudeness, cruelty, and lack of respect.
Above all, I oppose the new world order Donald and Elon have created, where they do whatever they can to help that butcher and war criminal, Vladimir Putin.
My fellow Americans, this is the greatest country on earth—the greatest country that ever existed. And I refuse to allow the United States of America to turn into a vassal state of the Russian Empire. The occupant of the White House should be the Leader of the Free World, not some third-rate tyrant’s sidekick.
Donald has consistently denied his long ties to the Kremlin. “Russia Russia Russia,” he says mockingly, whenever some new revelation comes out about something involving him and Moscow. He has ridiculed anyone who suggests he is Putin’s puppet—as Hillary Clinton did, you may recall, in that debate back in 2016, right around the time the U.S. Intelligence Community warned that the Kremlin was attempting to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. Later, in Helsinki, Trump would side with Putin over our intelligence professionals!
He claims the Mueller investigation was a “witch hunt.” Same with Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Even Marco Rubio, Trump’s groveling Secretary of State, signed off on that, admitting the Trump/Russia relationship. It wasn’t a witch hunt, you see. Donald doeshave lots of ties to the Kremlin. And, as he made abundantly clear in Friday’s Oval Office debacle, he is indeed Putin’s puppet.
Putin’s puppet: That sounds like the sort of insult Donald likes to hurl as his opponents, but I don’t mean it as an insult. I mean it as a statement of fact. Trump has thrown in with Putin. He has taken up Moscow’s position regarding the invasion of Ukraine. He has parroted Kremlin talking points about President Zelenskyy.
You don’t have to believe me; you can look it up yourself. This is why so many people were so upset about the abhorrent way Donald and JD behaved at that meeting. People know: that’s not how American leaders are supposed to act!
On Friday, Donald told President Zelenskyy that he didn’t have the cards to play. When he said that, he put his own cards on the table. And now, incredibly, the United States of America is overtly, eagerly sucking up to Moscow. Why? So Co-President Elon Musk and the other new American oligarchs can make even more money—by stealing it from you and me.
Putin regards the United States as an enemy of Russia—as he should. Because he’s certainly our enemy—even if a lot of Americans haven’t quite realized it.
We are now finding out what it means when the President and Co-President are Putin’s puppets. Donald and Elon are charting the course the Kremlin wants for America. They want us broke. They want us sick. They want us stupid. They want us fighting each other. And they want us to leave the rest of the world alone.
Over the first two months of his second term, Donald and Co-President Musk have worked hard to give their whoremaster Vladimir Putin what he wants. So has Speaker Johnson, most of the Republicans in Congress, and the entire Trump Cabinet.
Let me explain what that means, in real terms.
They want us broke. That means they want a recession, a depression, economic tumult. They want mass unemployment. They want the stock market to collapse. They want us to go broke struggling to pay our bills. Have you read the contents of the austerity budget Speaker Johnson wants to pass? Trump and Musk will cut $2 trillion from things like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social welfare programs that Americans of allpolitical persuasions depend on. This will be to pay for tax cuts—which aren’t really tax cuts, because the American oligarch class doesn’t pay taxes like you and me. This is going to be mass theft on the grandest possible scale. This is stealing. You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is robbing Grandma to pay Elon. The result of this will be financial hardship for most Americans—just what Putin wants.
They want us sick. There is a measles epidemic now in Texas. It’s spreading. This is the result of a massive, decades-old Kremlin disinformation campaign around vaccines. RFK, Jr., who has done more to push this Kremlin lie than any other person on earth, is now in charge of our national health systems. He’s antivax. You know who isn’t antivax? Putin. Putin and Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, love their vaccines. Rupert was one of the first people on earth to get the covid vaccine. They know vaccines work—but they want you to think they don’t. RFK also wants to cut funding for cancer research and pandemic preparedness. He wants to get rid of SSRIs, which are incredible drugs that help millions of Americans who struggle with their mental health. Why? Because RFK’s job is to make us all sick—which is what Putin wants.
They want us stupid. Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. Let me say that again: Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. And she’s going to cut funding, if not kill the department entirely. They say they want to empower the states to decide how our children are being educated, but that’s just the cover story. All this will do is make our schools exponentially worse. Which is what Putin wants—it doesn’t help Russia if Americans are inventing things, and bringing new technology to the world.
They want us fighting each other, and they want us isolated from the rest of the world. Pete Hegseth, the drunken Fox News host who is somehow our Secretary of Defense, ordered Cyber Command to stand down its defenses against Russia. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin? Tulsi Gabbard ordered mass firings at the NSA, our largest and most important intelligence gathering agency. Why would she do that, if not to please Putin? JD Vance, the pompous imbecile who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, is on an anti-diplomacy tour, insulting all of our longtime allies—the leaders of Western democracies. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin?
This is what it looks like when a Kremlin puppet dictator is in the White House. This is why Hillary Clinton, and James Comey, and James Clapper, and Christopher Steele, and Pete Strzok, and Adam Schiff, and Nancy Pelosi, and Bob Mueller, and Jack Smith worked so hard to expose Donald Trump for what he is.
The message failed. The warning was ignored. And what is happening now, right now, is the result. The chaos, the cruelty, the ignorance, the rudeness, the lack of fundamental human decency, the fear and dread—that is the result.
We have Putin puppets in charge of our country. We are being led by full-on traitors: Donald Trump and Elon Musk, JD Vance and Mike Johnson.
None of those people care about you or your family; if they did, they would occasionally do something to help you. None of them care about what’s good for the United States; if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to burn it down. And none of them care about democracy; if they did, they would not be establishing a Trump/Musk dictatorship, modeled on the philosophy of the Unabomber. I’m not kidding—read the Unabomber Manifesto!
Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m just trying to score cheap political points. Sooner or later—sooner, probably—it will become obvious to even the most zealous Trump supporter: Change is coming, my friends, and unless you’re one of the new oligarchs, you’re not going to like it.
Ignore me at your peril. Peril. Peril.
The state of the Union is perilous. And we must recognize the threat, and oppose it with every fiber of our beings, and with every means at our disposal. If we don’t, we will dishonor the memory of Abraham Lincoln. If we don’t, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall indeed perish from the earth.
God bless you, and God save America.
…or something to that effect. These motherfuckers have all but announced their plans to steal our Social Security. If you can’t message on that, hang up the spikes.
Or, if the Dems can’t manage something so sophisticated, offer an alternate broadcast—Manning Cam, but for the State of the Union. Have AOC and Jasmine live-stream themselves watching the SOTU, so they can fact-check and mock Donald while he’s speaking. I would certainly watch that.
And as for the rest of us? The course is clear: DON’T WATCH THE SOTU. Deny Donald the ratings he desperately craves.
If the Dems don’t offer suitable counter-programming, I’ve set my State of the Oblast speech to run tonight at 9 pm ET:
Or, if you prefer to ignore the whole shit-show—I don’t blame you!—turn on the telly and flip to TNT, where there’s an NBA doubleheader beginning at 7:30: First, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors are at Madison Square Garden to take on Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks. (Go, New York, go, New York, go!) And then, the L.A. Clippers are in Phoenix to play Kevin Durant and the Suns. Remember: keeping the television tuned to a different station hurts Donald’s precious ratings.
There it is. Those are my proposals.
And if we see clips of Jeffries and Schumer and the others just sitting there as Trump rants and raves, looking solemn, clapping softly, normalizing the fascist takeover, we know damned well what that means: craven, cowardly, poltroonish surrender, of the most shameful kind, before the fight has even really begun.
Then we’ll know for sure the Democrats, like the Republicans, are dead as a political party.
Diane Ravitch's blog 