Thursday, May 29, 2025

All Bad Things Must Come to an End, Too

Unfolding events in Washington are reminding us that just like all good things, bad things, too, must come to an end—some of them, at least.  We had two very bad things discontinued yesterday, with the federal Court of International Trade delivering a three-man tag team body slam to the Emperor of Tariffs, which will require the dazed, dawdling grandad's corner men to cease and desist in the current extortion and bribery scheme of illegal tariffs and to to repay every nickel so far collected under this corrupt gangster game. 

But don’t quite ungird your loins yet.  TariffMania’s aged star is working on new moves that will bring him more power and wealth even as it breaks an economy that was the envy of the world four months ago.

Equally delightful was the news that Elon Musk will take his collection of black MAGA hats, model rockets, ketamine bag, and his only friend, Grok, and finally get the hell out of DC.  

Since his humiliating and spectacularly failed efforts on April 1 to buy a state supreme court seat in Wisconsin with a $25 million campaign gift and $1million bribes to lucky MAGAt voters, Elmo has found himself as marginalized as a pregnant Trump wife. 

When Felon’s big AI deal with UAE did not include Elmo’s xAI, Musk suddenly found himself waiting in the receiving line on May 14 at the Abu Dhabi palace, rather than milling about and chumming with the Emir and Felon. And so Musk returns to his company brands that have been decimated by his hateful arrogance and intentional cruelty.  

Elmo will leave in his smelly wake vital federal departments now gutted, untold numbers of crushed American civil servants, and hundreds of thousands of children around the world who have already died from starvation or the absence of needed drugs previously made available through USAID, which Musk and his juvenile delinquent minions destroyed in the first weeks of the DOGE deluge.

It will take a long time for the musk to clear from the air along the Potomac. After all, the architect of Project 2025, Russ Vought, has picked up the Musk crap dispenser and begun applying it with more tactical precision.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars

by Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Series: Segregation Academies:Decades After Desegregation, Private Schools Still Divide

More in this series

Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.

In North Carolina alone, we identified 39 of these likely “segregation academies” that are still operating and that have received voucher money. Of these, 20 schools reported student bodies that were at least 85% white in a 2021-22 federal survey of private schools, the most recent data available.

Those 20 academies, all founded in the 1960s and 1970s, brought in more than $20 million from the state in the past three years alone. None reflected the demographics of their communities. Few even came close.

Northeast Academy, a small Christian school in rural Northampton County on the Virginia border, is among them. As of the 2021-22 survey, the school’s enrollment was 99% white in a county that runs about 40% white.

Every year since North Carolina launched its state-funded private school voucher program in 2014, the academy has received more and more money. Last school year, it received about $438,500 from the program, almost half of its total reported tuition. Northeast is on track to beat that total this school year.

Vouchers play a similar role at Lawrence Academy, an hour’s drive south. It has never reported Black enrollment higher than 3% in a county whose population hovers around 60% Black. A small school with less than 300 students, it received $518,240 in vouchers last school year to help pay for 86 of those students.

Farther south, Pungo Christian Academy has received voucher money every year since 2015 and, as of the last survey, had become slightly more white than when the voucher program began. It last reported a student body that was 98% white in a county that was 65% white.

Segregation academies that remain vastly white continue to play an integral role in perpetuating school segregation — and, as a result, racial separation in the surrounding communities. We found these academies benefiting from public money in Southern states beyond North Carolina. But because North Carolina collects and releases more complete data than many other states, it offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-style programs.

Called Opportunity Scholarships, North Carolina’s voucher program launched in 2014. At first, it was only for low-income families and had barely more than 1,200 participants. Then last fall, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school, a move that sparked furious debate over the future of public education.

“We are ensuring that every child has the chance to thrive,” Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham argued. But Democratic Rep. Julie von Haefen pointed to vouchers’ “legacy of white supremacy” and called the expansion “a gross injustice to the children of North Carolina.”

So many students flocked to the program that the state now has a waitlist of about 54,000 children. Paying for all of them to receive vouchers — at a cost of $248 million — would more than double the current number of participants in the program. Republicans in the General Assembly, along with three Democrats, passed a bill in September to do just that.

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the measure. But the GOP supermajority is expected to override it before the year’s end, perhaps as early as Nov. 19.

Opportunity Scholarships don’t always live up to their name for Black children. Private schools don’t have to admit all comers. Nor do they have to provide busing or free meals. Due to income disparities, Black parents also are less likely to be able to afford the difference between a voucher that pays at most $7,468 a year and an annual tuition bill that can top $10,000 or even $20,000.

And unlike urban areas that have a range of private schools, including some with diverse student bodies, segregation academies are the only private schools available in some rural counties across the South.

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State, studies these barriers and sees where vouchers fall short for some: “Eligibility does not mean access.”

Of the 20 vastly white segregation academies we identified that received voucher money in North Carolina, nine were at least 30 percentage points more white than the counties in which they operate, based on 2021-22 federal survey and census data.

Otis Smallwood, superintendent of the Bertie County Schools in rural northeastern North Carolina, witnesses this kind of gulf in the district he leads. So many white children in the area attend Lawrence Academy and other schools that his district’s enrollment runs roughly 22 percentage points more Black than the county overall.

He said he tries not to be political. But he feels the brunt of an intensifying Republican narrative against public schools, which still educate most of North Carolina’s children. “It’s been chipping, chipping, chipping, trying to paint this picture that public schools are not performing well,” Smallwood said. “It’s getting more and more and more extreme.”

When a ProPublica reporter told him that Lawrence Academy received $518,240 last school year in vouchers, he was dismayed: “That’s half a million dollars I think could be put to better benefit in public schools.”

If lawmakers override the governor’s veto to fund the waitlist, Smallwood’s district could suffer most. In a recent report, the Office of State Budget and Management projected Bertie County could lose more of its state funding than any other district — 1.6% next year.

Across the once legally segregated South, the volume of public money flowing through voucher-style programs is set to balloon in coming years. Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina all have passed new or expanded programs since 2023. (South Carolina’s state Supreme Court rejected its tuition grants in September, but GOP lawmakers are expected to try again with a revamped court.)

Voucher critics contend these programs will continue to worsen school segregation by helping wealthier white kids attend private schools; supporters argue they help more Black families afford tuition. But many of the states have made it hard to discern if either is happening by failing to require that the most basic demographic data be shared with the public — or even gathered.

This doesn’t surprise Cowen, who wrote the new book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.” He said Southern legislatures in particular don’t want to know what the data would show because the results, framed by a legacy of racism, could generate negative headlines and lawsuit fodder.

States know how to collect vast troves of education data. North Carolina in particular is lauded among global researchers for “the robustness and the richness of the data system for public schools,” Cowen said.

North Carolina and Alabama are among the states that have gathered demographic information about voucher recipients but won’t tell the public the race of students who use them to attend a given school. In North Carolina, a spokesperson said doing so could reveal information about specific students, making that data not a public record under the Opportunity Scholarship statue.

For its $120 million tax credit program, Georgia does not collect racial demographic information or per-school spending. ProPublica was able to identify 20 segregation academies that signed up to take part, but it’s unclear how many are receiving that money or what the racial breakdown is of the students who use it.

“Why should we not be allowed to know where the money is going? It’s a deliberate choice by those who pass these laws,” said Jessica Levin, director of Public Funds Public Schools, a national anti-voucher campaign led by the nonprofit Education Law Center. “There is a lack of transparency and accountability.”

Advocacy groups that support widespread voucher use have resisted some rules that foster greater transparency out of concern that they might deter regulation-averse private schools from participating. Mike Long, president of the nonprofit Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, is among those trying to rally as much private school buy-in for vouchers as possible.

“Their fear is that if they accept it, these are tax dollars, and therefore they would have to submit to government regulation,” Long said. “We’ve lobbied this legislature, and I think they understand it very well, that you can’t tie regulation to this.”

The share of Black students who have received vouchers in North Carolina has dropped significantly since the program's launch. In 2014, more than half the recipients were Black. This school year, the figure is 17%.

That share is unlikely to increase if lawmakers fund all 54,000 students on the waiting list. Because lower-income families were prioritized for vouchers, the applicants who remain on the list are mostly in higher income tiers — and those families are more likely to be white.

More Black parents don’t apply for vouchers because they don’t know about them, said Kwan Graham, who oversees parent liaisons for Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina.

Graham, who is Black, said parents haven’t voiced to her concerns that, “I’m Black, they don’t want me” at their local private schools. But she’s also not naive. Private schools can largely select — and reject — who they want.

The nonprofit Public Schools First NC has tallied admissions policies that private schools receiving vouchers use to reject applicants based on things like sexuality, religion and disability. Many also require in-person interviews or tours. Rather than overtly rejecting students based on race, which the voucher program prohibits, schools might say something like, “Come visit the school and see if you’re the ‘right fit,’” said Heather Koons, the nonprofit’s communications and research director.

Northeast Academy, Lawrence Academy and Pungo Christian all include nondiscrimination statements on their websites.

Back when segregation academies opened, some white leaders proudly declared their goal of preserving segregation. Others shrouded their racist motivations. Some white parents complained about federal government overreach and what they deemed social agendas and indoctrination in public schools. Even as violent backlash against integration erupted across the region, many white parents framed their decisions as quests for quality education, morality and Christian education, newspaper coverage and school advertisements from the time show.

Early on, Southern lawmakers found a way to use taxpayer money to give these academies a boost: They created school voucher programs that went chiefly to white students.

Courts ruled against or restricted the practice in the 1960s. But it didn’t really end.

“If you look at the history of the segregation movement, they wanted vouchers to prop up segregation academies,” said Bryan Mann, a University of Kansas professor who studies school segregation. “And now they’re getting vouchers in some of these areas to prop up these schools.”

More recently, Lawrence and Northeast academies both grew their enrollments while receiving voucher money even as the rural counties where they operate have lost population. Over three decades of responding to the federal private schools survey, both academies have reported enrolling almost no nonwhite children. And Pungo Christian has raised its average tuition by almost 50% over the past three school years. During that time, the small school has received almost $500,000 in vouchers.

None of the three academies’ headmasters responded to ProPublica’s request to discuss its findings or to lists of questions. And none have ever reported more than 3% Black enrollment despite operating in counties with substantial — even majority — Black populations.

One of the Democrats who helped Republicans expand North Carolina’s voucher program was Shelly Willingham, a Black representative whose district includes Bertie County, home of Lawrence Academy. He said he doesn’t love vouchers, but the bills have included funding for issues he does support.

He also said he encourages his constituents to take advantage of the vouchers. If there were any effort to make it more difficult for Black students to attend those schools, “then I would have a big problem,” Willingham said. “I don’t see that.”

Another Democrat who voted with Republicans was state Rep. Michael Wray, a white businessman and former House minority whip — who graduated from Northeast Academy.

Wray, whose voting record on vouchers over the years has been mixed, did not respond to multiple ProPublica requests to discuss his views. In 2013, he voted against the budget bill that established the Opportunity Scholarships. And in a recent Q&A with the local Daily Herald newspaper, when asked if he supports taxpayer money funding private schools, he responded: “I believe that when you siphon funds away from our public school budgets, it undermines the success of our schools overall.”

Rodney Pierce, a Black 46-year-old father and public school teacher, saw the voucher expansion in the state budget bill Wray voted for and felt history haunt him. Pierce had only one white student in his classes last year at Gaston STEM Leadership Academy. But about 30 miles across the rural county, white children filled Northeast Academy.

Pierce taught history, with a deep interest in civil rights. He’d studied the voucher programs that white supremacists crafted to help white families flee to segregation academies.

“This stuff was in the works back in the 1960s,” Pierce said.

He was so outraged that he challenged Wray, a 10-term incumbent, for his state House seat. Pierce won the Democratic primary earlier this year by just 34 votes. He faced no opponent in November, so come next year he will cut the House’s support of vouchers by one vote.

“Particularly in the Black community, we care about our public schools,” he said.

Many Black families also have little to no relationship with their local private schools, especially those that opened specifically for white children and are still filled with them. The only times Pierce had set foot on Northeast Academy’s campus was when he covered a few sporting events there for the local newspaper.

People there were nice to him, he said, but he felt anxious: “You’re in an academy you know was started by people who didn’t want their children to go to school with Black children.”

His own three kids attend public schools. Even with vouchers, he said, he wouldn’t send them to a school founded as a segregation academy, much less one that still fosters segregation. He finds it insulting to force taxpayers, including the Black residents he will soon represent — about half of the people in his district — to pay to send other people’s children to these schools.

Monday, May 26, 2025

Rapidly expanding school voucher programs pinch state budgets

by Kevin Hardy, Stateline
May 20, 2025

In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.

Characterizing vouchers as an “entitlement program,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.

It’s a dilemma that some budget experts fear will become more common nationwide as the costs of school choice measures mount across the states, reaching billions of dollars each year.

“School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term,” said Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Vouchers and scholarship programs, which use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition, are part of the wider school choice movement that also includes charter schools and other alternatives to public schools.

Opponents have long warned about vouchers draining resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. But research into several programs has shown many voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools. That means universal vouchers could drive up costs by creating two parallel education systems — both funded by taxpayers.

School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don't think is sustainable long term.

– Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In Arizona, state officials reported most private school students receiving vouchers in the first two years of the expanded program were not previously enrolled in public schools. In fiscal year 2024, more than half the state’s 75,000 voucher recipients were previously enrolled in private schools or were being homeschooled.

“Vouchers don’t shift costs — they add costs,” Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who studies the issue, recently told Stateline. “Most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning states are paying for education they previously didn’t have to fund.”

Voucher proponents, though, say those figures can be misleading. Arizona, like other states with recent expansions, previously had more modest voucher programs. So some kids who were already enrolled in private schools could have already been receiving state subsidies.

In addition to increasing competition, supporters say the programs can actually save taxpayer dollars by delivering education at a lower overall cost than traditional public schools.

One thing is certain: With a record number of students receiving subsidies to attend private schools, vouchers are quickly creating budget concerns for some state leaders.

The rising costs of school choice measures come after years of deep cuts to income taxes in many states, leaving them with less money to spend. An end of pandemic-era aid and potential looming cuts to federal support also have created widespread uncertainty about state budgets.

Trump’s school choice push adds to momentum in statehouses

“We’re seeing a number of things that are creating a sort of perfect storm from a fiscal perspective in the states,” said Tucker, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last year, Arizona leaders waded through an estimated $1.3 billion budget shortfall. Budget experts said the voucher program was responsible for hundreds of millions of that deficit.

A new universal voucher program in Texas is expected to cost $1 billion over its next two-year budget cycle — a figure that could balloon to nearly $5 billion by 2030, according to a legislative fiscal note.

Earlier this year, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill expanding the state’s voucher program. But last week, he acknowledged his own “substantial concerns” about the state’s ability to fund vouchers and its public education obligations under the constitution.

“I think the legislature’s got a very tall task to understand how they’re going to be able to fund all of these things,” he said in an interview with WyoFile.

Voucher proponents, who have been active at the state level for years, are gaining new momentum with support from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

In January, Trump ordered federal agencies to allow states, tribes and military families to access federal money for private K-12 education through education savings accounts, voucher programs or tax credits.

Last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of making $20 billion available over the next four years for a federal school voucher program. Part of broader work on a bill to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the measure would need a simple majority in the House and the Senate to pass.

Sweeping private school voucher program tucked inside US House tax bill

Martin Lueken, the director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice measures, argues school choice measures can actually deliver savings to taxpayers.

Lueken said vouchers are not to blame for state budget woes. He said public school systems for years have increased spending faster than inflation. And he noted that school choice measures make up a small share of overall state spending — nationally about 0.3% of total state expenditures in states with school choice, he said.

“Public schooling remains one of the largest line items in state budgets,” he said in an interview. “They are still the dominant provider of K-12 education, and certainly looking at the education pie, they still receive the lion’s share.

“It’s not a choice problem. I would say that it’s a problem with the status quo and the public school system,” he said.

Washington, D.C., and 35 states offer some school choice programs, according to EdChoice. That includes 18 states with voucher programs so expansive that virtually all students can participate regardless of income.

But Lueken said framing vouchers as a new entitlement program is misleading. That’s because all students, even the wealthiest, have always been entitled to a public education — whether they’ve chosen to attend free public schools or private ones that charge tuition.

“At the end of the day, the thing that matters most above dollars are students and families,” he said. “Research is clear that competition works. Public schools have responded in very positive ways when they are faced with increased competitive pressure from choice programs.”

Public school advocates say funding both private and public schools is untenable.

Some states reexamine school discipline as Trump order paves go-ahead

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are considering a major voucher expansion that would alter the funding structure for vouchers, potentially putting more strain on the state’s general fund.

The state spent about $629 million on its four voucher programs during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, which represents employees in school district finance, human resources and leadership.

The association warns proposed legislation could exacerbate problems with the “unaffordable parallel school systems” in place now by shifting more private schooling costs from parents of those students to state taxpayers at large.

Such expansion “could create the conditions for even greater funding challenges for Wisconsin’s traditional public schools and the state budget as a whole,” the association’s research director wrote in a paper on the issue.

In Arizona, Hobbs originally sought to eliminate the universal voucher program — a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled legislature. She has since proposed shrinking the program by placing income limits that would disqualify the state’s wealthiest families.

That idea also faced Republican opposition.

Legislators are now pushing to enshrine access to vouchers in the state constitution.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 20,000-member teachers union, noted that vouchers and public education funds are both sourced from the general fund.

“So it almost immediately started to impact public services,” she said of the universal voucher program.

While the union says vouchers have led to cutbacks of important resources such as counselors in public schools, Garcia said the sweeping program also affects the state’s ability to fund other services like housing, transportation and health care.

“Every budget cycle becomes where can we cut in order to essentially feed this out-of-control program?” she said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

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Monday, May 19, 2025

Trump & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

or, How Gangster-in-Chief Squeezes Millions from Corporate Media




Update May 20 2025

CBS News is on the Verge of Giving Donald Trump a Massive Settlement by Aaron Parnas

CBS News is on the verge of giving Trump a large settlement, the DOJ goes after a Democratic Congresswoman, Trump approached Qatar to ask for a jet, Trump did not get his Ukraine ceasefire, and more

Read on Substack

Thursday, May 15, 2025

MAGA Gang Boss and Convicted Felon Wants to Define Citizenship

This is from law professor Joyce Vance, whose excellent analysis on “Civil Discourse” is well worth reading:

[Today] the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. We’re here because Donald Trump is intent on usurping as much of the power of government as he can into his own hands. And what is more fundamental than assigning citizenship? We know that Trump wants people from Mexico, Central America, South America, the Middle East, and Asia out of the country. But he’s okay with white Afrikaners from South Africa, even willing to bring them in, give them benefits, and put them on a fast track to citizenship. Deporting people to gulags in El Salvador and abducting students and others from their neighborhoods are part and parcel of this. Trump is, quite literally, trying to define the complexion of America.

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Tell Congress to Stop the Presidential Crime Wave

 

Tell Congress to Impeach Trump

Take Action

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    Friday, May 09, 2025

    Monday, May 05, 2025

    If You Need a Reputable Lawyer, Here’s Your DO NOT CALL LIST



    The 60 Minutes story here:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-orders-target-law-firms some-lawyers-say-that-threatens-rule-of-law-60-minutes-transcript/


    Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

    Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

    Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP


    Milbank LLP


    Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP


    Kirkland & Ellis LLP


    Latham & Watkins LLP


    Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP


    Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

    Convicted Felon Tries to Upstage Pope's Funeral

    Yes, Felonious Trump was there yesterday on the front row with a bright blue suit, orange face, and his signature yellow ferret hat. Bored beyond measure, he kept busy on his phone checking his crypto, chewing gum, and snoozing with his foul mouth gaping.


    Never one to waste an opportunity to draw more attention to himself, Trump had another plan to become the star of this show.  Felonious could use this worldwide audience to convey the illusion that he gives a whit about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was applauded by the massive crowd when he arrived at the funeral. Guess who wasn’t applauded!

    Why not have some chairs pulled into an open and public area and quickly arrange an impromptu tete-a-tete with the new real leader of the free world. Then Felonious could tweet out the results and pretend that he had actually learned something from Zelensky.  Genius, right?


    As soon as the service concluded, Trump had his party whisked back to the airport. He had better things to do, more important things, more carefully-designed anguish to impose upon the immigrants of the world for whom Pope Francis had devoted so much energy during his long life.





    Sunday, April 20, 2025

    Next National Day of Protest: May 1

    As you think about the upcoming national protest against fascism in 2 weeks, please think about this: 


    Friday, April 18, 2025

    Missouri Rejects Voucher Expansion

    Voucher Expansion Rejected in Missouri by Andy Spears

    Senate committee strips $50 million in voucher expansion funds from Gov's budget

    Read on Substack

    White Man's World - Jason Isbell


    Yes, there are some (not many) white male Southern artists who resent the white male repressive monoculture that has and would continue if allowed to exclude any group or individual that is not white, male, Xtn.

    Tuesday, April 15, 2025

    Harvard’s "Resounding Rebuke" of Trump’s Extortion Efforts Represents a Turning Point

    Harvard University’s most recent decision to stand up against Trump’s criminal bullying serves as a crucial turning point in the fight against American fascism in this decade.  

    By upholding the institutional integrity of America’s oldest and most prestigious center of learning, Harvard stands as a fortress of intellectual and moral freedom against the dark forces of hate, ignorance, and criminality that provide the rotted foundation of  MAGA’s home office in Washington.

    As you join the growing resistance this coming Saturday in the ongoing war to save democracy in the United States, 

    Be Harvard, not Columbia!

    Saturday, April 05, 2025

    What Happened in the Senate

     

    U.S. Senator Chris Murphy

    Overnight, Republicans put the outline of their budget bill up for debate — the “one big, beautiful bill” Trump demanded. It puts together a massive hike on the debt ceiling that they need to get away with their tax giveaway to billionaires and corporations paid for by cuts to programs like Medicaid. 

    We started voting around 8 PM on a Friday night because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.

    But I think it’s important you know because we all need to be shining a spotlight on what is going on. So let me explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. 

    This bill is the core of Trump and Republicans’ billionaire first agenda. They put up a bill that gives $4.6 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations and people — paid for by the rest of us. They want to slash popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and SNAP. 

    Last night’s vote was a required procedural step to move this bill forward. It’s just an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as they want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that. 

    Now, we knew that Republicans would largely oppose them unanimously, but we had two objectives here. One, Republicans were forced to put their opinion on record on the most corrupt parts of Trump and Musk’s agenda. Two, I remain committed to making every process and procedure as slow and painful as possible for as long as my colleagues choose to ignore the constitutional crisis happening before our eyes. And the good news is that, with your help, more and more of my Democratic colleagues are joining me in this effort. 

    So what did we propose? We made them vote on preventing any cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. We made them vote on the White House’s corruption — from Signalgate to Trump’s crypto currency — and the seemingly unlimited power being given to Elon Musk and DOGE. Every single one of them was voted down. 

    I put forward an amendment to simply say that people making more than $500 MILLION per year should not get a tax cut. It would take someone making $10 an hour 2,857 years to earn $500 million. But, they voted it down.

    On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. 

    Republicans are not too ashamed of their corruption or theft to change course. They just want to hide it in the dark of the night. The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. That’s the “disturbance” that Trump claims the American people are fine to pay. 

    It sounds an awful lot like what Lord Farquaad said, “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.” 

    Look, they know this shit is deeply unpopular, and they simply do not care. This is the agenda the billionaires literally paid for. In 2024, six donors each spent more than $100 million on the election. Every single one of them was a Republican. 

    This is what we’re up against, and it’s why we have to do everything possible to mobilize the American people en masse and fight back to save our democracy. 

    Thanks to your pressure and support, I hope you’ve noticed more of my Democratic colleagues have joined my effort to do everything we can to make sure they cannot destroy democracy and steal your money in the dark of the night. We are being loud about what is happening. We are using the tools available to us. 

    I’m going to continue to grind the gears of Congress down as much as possible to make it that much harder and slower to get away with this corruption. That’s why the votes lasted until nearly 3 AM. It’s why I stayed in the Senate right alongside Cory Booker for 25 hours as his wingman to make sure he could pull off that extraordinary and historic measure. It’s why I’ve opposed every single Trump nominee — even perfectly qualified ones — for the past two months. Extraordinary times require extraordinary tactics and risks from us. 

    It is easy to feel hopeless in dark times like these. So I just want to be clear: I believe it’s still in our power to stop the destruction of our democracy with mass mobilization and effective opposition from elected officials. 

    That’s why I’m hitting the road to go to Republican districts and hold town halls. And you’ve got a role too. I need you to amplify what’s happening, support the leaders who are fighting for you to make sure they can continue speaking truth to power against Musk and Trump’s billionaire cronies, and show up at rallies and town halls. Use every tool at your disposal to send a message loud and clear about how you expect my colleagues to lead and fight in this moment. 

    Every best wish, 

    Chris Murphy

    Monday, March 31, 2025

    The Newest Old Politics of Reading

    I subscribe to the Hall Pass Newsletter from Knox County Schools, where I worked as a high school librarian many years ago. 

    The most recent issue offered evidence that the current administration has taken the repackaged bait of the phonics fanatics and are running with it.  I took a moment to write a response to this revolting development:



    Dear Dr. Wilson:

    Reading requires understanding, and none of the mandated exercises that you are bragging about require students to understand anything. The ability to pronounce words or even nonsense syllables is a measurement to the shortsightedness and stupidity of those in charge of this reading pedagogy that was popularized over 250 years ago. 

    Like the rest of the Neo-fascist orthodoxy that is now running amok in the country, your “changing the game in literacy” represents several steps backward to an era when pedagogy focused on memorization, recitation, and chain gang rigidity. 
     
    “Quick phonics" and "quick spelling" are just tired retreads of an approach most recently tried and failed during the Bush NCLB heyday that began over two decades ago.

    More attention to more quality reading materials, validated reading programs, and better school libraries have to be first steps to successful reading outcomes—if you want students to become competent, self-directed, and thoughtful citizens who love reading and who understand what they read. But then, that is not the goal at all, is it, sir?

    Instead, KCS has embarked upon campaigns to censor library and classroom collections and, thus, replace teacher enthusiasm with fear and trepidation that they might be fired for not following Christian nationalist dictates that have been approved by the convicted felon now living in the White House.

    The people of Knox County deserve leaders who can distinguish leadership from craven kowtowing. 

    Sincerely,
    James Horn, PhD
    Former West High School Librarian (1982-1996)

    Saturday, March 22, 2025

    Missed Social Security checks no big deal to Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary


    Did I mention that Lutnick’s mother-in-law, Geri Lambert, lives in a Manhattan Upper East Side townhouse once owned by Jeffrey Epstein?  

    Unlike millions of Americans who paid into the System for decades, I guess she probably doesn’t use her Social Security check to buy groceries and pay the light bill.

    It is time to be speak up, rise up, be counted.  If you are doing nothing but doom-scrolling on your antisocial media platform, you are part of the problem.  


    Friday, March 21, 2025

    We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: Stop Oz

     

    Tell your Senators: Oppose Trump's selection of Dr. Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid

    Take Action

  • Not in US? United States
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    Friday, March 14, 2025

    The Plan to Replace Education with Christian Nationalist Propaganda

     by Rachel Laser:

    Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to credible reports that President Donald Trump will sign an executive order declaring an end to the U.S. Department of Education later today:

    Ending Dept. of Education is part of Christian Nationalist agenda set out in Project 2025

    “The Trump Administration’s attempt to end the Department of Education is part of the Christian Nationalist agenda set out in Project 2025 to destroy public education that benefits all communities in favor of private, religious education. Every public school district and most colleges and universities in the country rely on the Department of Education as do the students and communities served by those schools.

    “Among its many important functions, the Department of Education ensures that millions of American students receive financial aid for higher education and that public schools respect students’ civil rights. The stroke of a magic marker cannot take away those important functions and rights from American students.

    “Public education is one of the great promises of America – our pledge to our children that they have the power to brighten our collective future. This order signals that Trump wants to betray that promise and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans into Christian Nationalism. Americans United will continue to fight for public schools and against the Christian Nationalist assault on public education.”

    If You Are So Fortunate . . .

    If you are so fortunate as to have a U.S. Senator who is not a Republican, please call and remind her of this before the budget vote later today.  

    Reject House Republicans’ Power Grab Funding Bill

    Thank you.  Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

    Wednesday, March 12, 2025

    Andy Ogles Offers Another Example of GOP Town Hall to Avoid Constituents

    Andy Ogles posted an announcemnt on Instagram, nonetheless, for a telephone town hall.  The announcement was posted the same day of the event, March 5.

    Here is one response from a constituent, which was published as a Letter to the Editor of The Tennessean:

    In a recent telephone town hall hosted by Congressman Andy Ogles, R-District 5 (Middle Tennessee), I found myself grappling with a profound sense of disappointment.

    The format, hastily arranged and, perhaps, prompted by David Huebner's letter to the editor in The Tennessean, stifled genuine dialogue.

    Constituents were unable to directly address questions, and my own submission was heavily redacted, stripping it of its meaning and allowing Ogles to deflect.

    This experience raises a critical question: Are we witnessing the erosion of democratic engagement?

    Ogles' unwavering allegiance to Trump and MAGA, coupled with his unresponsiveness to the needs of the 5th District, suggests a troubling trend. He appears more committed to party directives than to the voices of his constituents.

    The parallels to Orwell's "1984" are striking. The elimination of facts, censorship of free thinking, and suppression of criticism of our elected officials are no longer confined to fiction.

    In "1984," the Party exercises absolute control over every aspect of life, from history to thoughts, through constant surveillance, propaganda, and the suppression of dissent.

    Similarly, the MAGA movement often employs slogans and rhetoric that simplify complex issues and create a polarized narrative. The redaction of my question and the deflection by Ogles can be seen as a form of propaganda, where the truth is manipulated to fit a particular narrative.

    Is this the new normal? Are we content with a future where our voices are silenced and our concerns dismissed? I urge my fellow constituents to reflect on these questions and to hold our elected officials accountable. We deserve better.

    Peter McDermott, Franklin 37067