If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I have a strong friendship with and great respect for the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children. Charlie comes to every conference of the Network for Public Education and is a strong advocate for public schools and the 5.4 million children who attend them. He believes deeply in separation of church and state, as do the 2,000 faith leaders in Texas who are part of Pastors for Texas Children. PTC was deeply involved in the voucher battle, on the side of public schools and church-state separation.

PTC has encouraged the creation of similar groups in other states. One of these groups is in North Carolina. I received this notice and thought some of you might want to participate in their zoom conversation about “Christian nationalism.”

People of Faith for Public Schools

Dear Advocates,

Though it’s still summer, our advocacy doesn’t stop! Have you been hearing about “Christian nationalism” but maybe don’t know quite what it is or why it matters to public education advocacy?

People of Faith For Public Schools, a project of Pastors for NC Children

Christian Nationalism:

What is it?

Why should we care?

How To End Christian Nationalism Zoom Book Discussion

Pastors for NC Children and Christians Against Christian Nationalism-North Carolina are co-sponsoring a 2 part zoom book discussion of Amanda Tyler’s “How To End Christian Nationalism”.

It will take place on Thursday, July 23 and Thursday, July 30 from 7-8:30pm. July 23 will look at the Introduction and Steps 1-4. July 30 will look at Steps 5-8 and the Conclusion. While we hope you read the book, you are invited to join in even if you haven’t. The discussion will include discussing the steps and how it intersects with our own experiences and life. The discussion will be led by Executive Director Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller.

ACTION ITEM: Register for the link at http://bit.ly/HTECNJuly2026

Support Our Work Today!

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to PNCC’s ministry. WE ARE SO GRATEFUL! Would you consider becoming a monthly donor or make a one time contribution to our goal? Could your church include PNCC in their mission giving? THANK YOU!

ACTION ITEM: Donate to PNCC’s Ministry Today!

Know of congregational, denominational, or community grants or opportunities to support our work? Let us know at Fundraising@PastorsForNCchildren.org

919.346.6114

Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller, Director

Director@PastorsForNCchildren.org

PastorsForNCchildren.org

DONATE HERE!

Copyright (C) 2026 Pastors for NC Children. All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
Pastors for NC Children P. O. Box 37241 Raleigh, NC 27627 USA

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

John Thompson: What Happened When Oklahoma Adopted the “Mississippi Miracle”

By dianeravitch

July 17, 2026 //

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, explains what happened when state officials in Oklahoma decided to adopt the “Mississippi Miracke.”

He writes:

In so many places, there is a push to implement the reward-and-punish “Mississippi Miracle.” And, unfortunately too many journalists believe their simplistic claims about increasing literacy. Oklahoma is just one example of a state implementing the so-called “Miracle,” so, our story should be a warning to others.

The Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce featured Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves in an event this June. Given the misinformation that the Chamber has been spreading about the so-called “Mississippi Miracle,” I assumed that Gov. Reeves would spin the same message. But, his false and misleading statements were far worse.

The leaders of the state Chamber have long repeated the falsehood that NAEP Proficiency is “grade level” when, in fact, grade level is closer to the much lower “Basic” category. This claim was invented in the 1980s in order to attack our public schools as irreparably broken.

Getting back to Gov. Reeves, Mississippi spins its State “Proficiency” rates as if they were connected with the reliable NAEP rates. But, from 2019 to 2024, the Mississippi State 8th grade Reading Proficiency rates increased by 6 points, while its NAEP Proficiency scores dropped by 2 points, increasing its State/NAEP Proficiency Gap to 19 points. The 4th grade gap reached 25 points.

So, I looked at Reeves’ record as governor and found an even more disturbing history. And I wondered whether the Chamber looked into his past before they hosted him.

But, I must start with Gov. Reeves plan for expanding test prep and retention policies to 8^th graders.

Reeves and the Oklahoma Chamber seem unaware that a major reason why test-driven accountability did so much damage was that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) set impossible targets that pressured schools to treat kids like numbers in order to try to minimize the inevitable harm the law would inflict.

However, he acknowledged that Mississippi hasn’t increased 8^th grade scores. Over the last 28 years, Mississippi’s 8^th grade NAEP reading scores improved by one point, indicating that they did not improve reading for comprehension, or help students “learn to read, so that they can read to learn.”

In 2023, their average 8^th grade NAEP reading score was 253. But, in 1998, the average score was 255.

Worse, NAEP – which (at least previously) couldn’t be taught to – has a long history of being the most reliable metric. But, Mississippi’s new 2025-26 standards:

Are based on multiple measures including statewide assessment results in English language arts, math and science, English learner progress, advanced course and career and technical education performance, and graduation rates.

Since Mississippi’s new tests are designed to be taught to, there is little reason to believe they reflect growth in learning.

Reeves then bragged about recently increasing Mississippi’s new targets. Under state law accountability, standards must increase “when 75 percent of students are proficient or when 65 percent of schools or districts earn a grade of B or higher.” But, their State and NAEP proficient scores were dramatically different. In 2024, only 23% of Mississippi 8th graders scored Proficient or above in NAEP reading.

I also wish the Oklahoma Chamber would fact check Reeves’ unsubstantiated claim that raising the bar leads to increased student learning. They could start with former Oklahoma Secretary of Education Daniel Hamlin’s research which found that states which set high performance test standards “have not found a way to translate these new benchmarks into higher levels of student test performance.”

Next, I would like to ask the Oklahoma State Chamber’s leaders if they looked into Reeves’ history. As the Mississippi Free Press explained, Reeves’ ties to the Sons of Confederate Veterans were longstanding. In 2013, He:

Spoke to the SCV’s national gathering in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in front of a massive Confederate battle flag and in a room decorated with smaller Confederate flags and cotton plants. After then-Lt. Gov. Reeves congratulated the organization for “keeping history for our youth,” speakers defended the Confederate “cause” and compared “Yankees” to German “Nazis” in World War II.

Moreover, Reeves’ subsequent proclamation did not mention the role of slavery and white supremacy.

And this April, Reeves, once again, signed the proclamation for the “Confederate Heritage Month.”

I have asked but received no answer as to what the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce knew about Reeves when it invited him to Oklahoma City.

In terms of improving schools, I would urge them to pay more attention to peer reviewed education research. And, it seems to me, that state leaders also should pay more attention to the Oklahoma City Chamber’s approach to school improvements, as opposed to the State Chamber.

It’s “Civic Lab is working to advance civic collaboration. Their practice is to look at what makes community collaboration flow best, document what they find and share those practices at a broad level.” Rhonda Baker, Director of Education for the Chamber, explained that they seek to report to the state legislature about better ways to connect the community and improve educational outcomes. And, “they’re talking to the nonprofit community to seek recommendations on policy and alignment changes to ultimately make programs mesh better.”

That, not praise for Jim Crow, sounds more like the Oklahoma Standard to me.

Categories Accountability, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

Hypocrite! Trump Gutted Federal Agencies in Charge of Election Security

By dianeravitch

July 17, 2026 //

Last night, Trump delivered a prime-time speech complaining about election security and blaming other countries–China and Venezuela–for trying to mess with our elections. Almost every word out of his mouth was a lie, with the exception of “a” and “the.”

He has long complained that the 2020 election was “rigged,” forgetting the inconvenient fact that he was President at the time. His lawyers sued to overturn the election results in 60 different cases, and lost repeatedly, even twice in the U.S. Supreme Cout that he stacked. The plain fact was that his lawyers presented no evidence of vote rigging. Even judges he appointed ruled against him.

CBS, now controlled by friends of Trump, reviewed his speech last night and demolished his false claims. Even CBS!

Nicole Sganga of CBS News pointed out that Trump officials fired thousands of federal employees whose job was to assure election security.

She wrote:

Election security has been one of President Trump’s primary preoccupations for years — lately, he’s been pressing Republicans in Congress to pass a voting regulation bill and he delivered a live primetime speech on the topic Thursday night. And yet, since the beginning of his second administration, the government has cut thousands of workers who were tasked with ensuring secure elections in the U.S.

At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s top cyber defense body protecting U.S. election systems, nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — or nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce — had left or been removed from active service by mid-2025.

Some were terminated, while others resigned or took administrative leave. Others had contracts that were not renewed or their programs were shut down. Altogether, staffing lingered at around 2,500, down from approximately 3,400 a year earlier. Those numbers were reflected in the Trump administration’s budget proposals. The request for the 2025 fiscal year sent by the Biden administration sought about $3 billion for CISA. The fiscal-year 2026 budget proposal sought approximately $2.4 billion and estimated a staff of 2,649 positions.

CISA was established in 2018, during the first Trump administration and received broad bipartisan support, investment and praise. But after President Trump lost the 2020 election, and the director of the agency, Chris Krebs, described the election as “the most secure in American history,” the president criticized what he called Krebs’ “highly inaccurate” comment and fired him.

Soon after Mr. Trump took office for his second administration, in February 2025, 17 CISA election-security employees were placed on administrative leave. CISA’s broader election-security activities were also subjected to an internal review.

CISA subsequently ended federal support for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Its core function is to help state and local election offices protect their systems from cyber threats.

The agency also reduced, then ultimately ended, its cooperative arrangement with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provides resources for cybersecurity, like monitoring for threats and vulnerabilities to networks, to state and local governments.

CISA said the cuts would save approximately $10 million annually, eliminate duplication and redirect resources to mission-critical work. But as a result, states have been forced to rely on their own information-technology agencies, fusion centers, private vendors and informal interstate relationships for services that used to come from the federal government.

In May, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, acknowledged the cuts had left them vulnerable when he formally asked DHS to justify reports that CISA was no longer providing states and localities with election-security support.

In the House, state officials asked Congress to restore or extend federal cybersecurity programs and grants, telling lawmakers that state and local entities were facing escalating threats but lack the personnel and resources available to the federal government or major private companies.

FBI, Justice Department and ODNI cuts putting elections at risk

While CISA is the major agency securing U.S. elections, there are other groups and task forces across the government working to ensure the integrity of elections that have also been slashed.

The Trump administration disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, with Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolving the unit on Feb. 5, 2025, her first day in office. The task force — which was created during Mr. Trump’s first administration in the wake of Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation — was charged with investigating covert foreign-influence activity, including campaigns targeting U.S. elections. At the time, Bondi said ending the task force would free resources for more pressing priorities and reduce the risk of politicized or abusive enforcement.

At the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, senior career attorneys responsible for voting-rights enforcement were also reassigned as part of a broader shake-up, and the Justice Department also withdrew from several voting-rights cases while redirecting the Voting Section toward voter-roll maintenance and suspected fraud.

At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, then-Director Tulsi Gabbard announced a restructuring that would reduce ODNI’s workforce by more than 40% and gutted the Foreign Malign Influence Center. FMIC had previously served as the intelligence community’s central hub for integrating intelligence on foreign efforts to manipulate American political attitudes and housed the Election Threats Executive. At the time, ODNI claimed the center duplicated work.

In April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, a successor to the Global Engagement Center whose work included countering Russian, Chinese and Iranian information operations that could affect American political debate.

Most recently, the Trump administration removed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission. On July 9, the White House fired its two Democratic commissioners, while its remaining Republican commissioner resigned, leaving the four-seat commission with no active leadership.

Historically, the EAC has been a national election clearinghouse, accrediting voting-system testing laboratories, certifying voting systems and distributing federal election grants — all while maintaining the national mail voter-registration form. The White House said the president was able to remove commissioners who are not aligned with his election-security objectives.

Categories Education Reform

Trump Nominees Flagrantly Lie to Keep Him Happy

By dianeravitch

July 16, 2026 //

This past week, Trump nominees appeared before Senate committees seeking their approval. when Senators ask direct questions, the nominees lied to avoid offending Donald Trump.

Mary Trump observes that the Big Question predictably elicits the Big Lie.

The Big Question is: Who won the 2020 election? Trump nominees dare not say, truthfully, Joe Biden. They have to find a way to pretend they didn’t hear the question or to duck answering.

Mary Trump writes:

Donald’s nominees continue to struggle with the most basic facts. They reject any history that does not fit the mythology he has created, and they seem far more concerned with demonstrating personal loyalty to Donald than with telling the truth to the American people.

Over the past several days, that pattern played out repeatedly during confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.

Donald’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence refused to acknowledge who won the 2020 presidential election. Another nominee claimed ignorance about Tulsi Gabbard’s role in the FBI raid on Fulton County’s election office in Georgia, despite the fact that it happened only months ago. Donald’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control could not even commit to refusing an illegal order from the President. And Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche once again tied himself into knots attempting to defend the indefensible while continuing to shield Donald from accountability over the Epstein files.

Taken individually, each exchange was disturbing. Taken together, they reveal something much more dangerous. Donald is not selecting public servants. He is selecting people willing to deny objective reality if doing so pleases him.

Donald’s nominee’s are lying through their teeth because they desperately want to continue working for, or begin working for, a pathetic little man they are apparently terrified of offending.

The Senate Intelligence Committee held this confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, Donald’s nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. It is difficult to overstate how important this position is. The Director of National Intelligence oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, and works closely with the FBI and countless other intelligence organizations. The entire purpose of the position is to provide the President with accurate intelligence, even when that intelligence is inconvenient or politically damaging.

The job is not to protect the President’s feelings. The job is to tell the truth. Does anybody honestly believe somebody unwilling to acknowledge who won an election four years ago would tell Donald something he does not want to hear today?

Not if he wants to keep his job.

Jon Ossoff, Democratic Senator from Georgia recognized exactly what was happening and continued pressing Clayton during the hearing.

This is the exchange:

Ossoff: It’s a simple question, Mr. Clayton.

Clayton: I’ve answered it.

Ossoff: Who won the 2020 presidential election?

Clayton: I’ve answered it.

Ossoff: You are here asking for the support of senators to lead America’s intelligence community. We’ve established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee and with the American public, but you refuse to answer a simple matter of fact about the 2020 election. Is that right?

Clayton: No, that’s not right.

Ossoff: Then answer the question. Who won the 2020 election?

Clayton: I have answered the question.

Ossoff: Answer it. What is your answer?

Clayton: I’ve given you my answer.

Ossoff: What is your answer? You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you ask to lead America’s intelligence community. Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know you know. Everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?

Clayton: I think I gave you the answer.

No.

He could not given the answer because he knows exactly what would happen if he did.

If he simply stated the obvious fact that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election by nearly eight million votes, Donald would immediately withdraw his nomination.

Clayton understands that. Every nominee understands that. Their confirmations are contingent upon demonstrating absolute loyalty, not competence. That is why they continue speaking in this absurd coded language about certifications, procedures, and Electoral College votes while refusing to utter one simple sentence.

Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost. Those facts remain intolerable inside the Trump regime because Donald himself cannot tolerate them.

If I had been asking questions during that hearing, I would have taken a different approach. I would have asked who won the 2016 election. Then I would have asked who won the 2012 election. Then 2008. Then 2004.

I suspect they would answer every single one correctly. Only one election has become unspeakable. Only one historical fact has been erased from acceptable Republican discourse. That tells you everything you need to know.

The hearing became even more disturbing when Clayton was questioned about Tulsi Gabbard’s involvement in the FBI raid on Fulton County’s election offices in Georgia earlier this year.

This was not an obscure historical event. It happened only six months ago. It involved the very office Clayton hopes to lead. And yet he suddenly developed an astonishing case of selective amnesia.

This is what Senator Jon Ossoff asked.

Ossoff: Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid in Georgia earlier this year?

Clayton: You discussed that with me yesterday in your office.

Ossoff: Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid earlier this year?

Clayton: You brought it to my attention yesterday.

Ossoff: What is going on here? You’ve said at the beginning of this you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee. I’m asking a very simple question. Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid earlier this year? Yes or no?

Clayton: I was…

Ossoff: You won’t answer that question either.

Clayton: I just said I was made aware of it by you yesterday.

Ossoff: The first time you learned that Director Gabbard was present at that raid was in my office yesterday?

Clayton: It was the first time that, in my recollection, I’ve thought about it recently. Now, was I aware of it before? You brought it to my attention yesterday. I had not thought…

Ossoff: So you had not known until…

Clayton: I had not thought about it until you brought it to my attention yesterday.

Ossoff: Your answers lack credibility. Your testimony lacks credibility. You’re being evasive and you’re not being candid or forthright. Everybody across the country is going to watch this and know that.

Ossoff: Are you aware that former Director Gabbard testified that her presence at the raid was requested by the president?

Clayton: I’m not aware of that until now.

What?

How could he possibly not know? This is a man seeking confirmation to oversee the nation’s intelligence apparatus. He either knew and lied about it, or he truly did not know one of the most controversial actions taken by the office he hopes to inherit. Neither possibility inspires confidence.

As Senator Ossoff pointed out, these confirmation hearings are job interviews. The nominees are expected to answer questions honestly, demonstrate competence, and reassure senators that they can be trusted with enormous responsibility.

Donald Trump’s nominees do exactly the opposite. They evade. They deflect. They pretend not to remember. They refuse to acknowledge reality when reality happens to inconvenience Donald Trump. And somehow they expect the American people to forget everything we have watched unfold over the last several years.

That is not intelligence. It is obedience. And that increasingly appears to be the only qualification Donald requires.

The same pattern continued when the Senate Health Committee held a confirmation hearing for Dr. Erica Schwartz, Donald’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the hearing, Senator Maggie Hassan asked Schwartz a direct and entirely reasonable question: if Donald instructed her to take an action that violated the law, would she follow the law or obey him? For anybody seeking to lead one of the most important public health agencies in the world, the answer should have been immediate and unequivocal.

This is what Senator Maggie Hassan asked Dr. Erica Schwartz:

Hassan: Dr. Schwartz, just a few minutes ago, you said in response to a question from Senator Kaine, you will always follow the law. So just to be clear, if the President of the United States instructs you to take an action that would break the law, will you follow the law or follow the President’s instruction, Dr. Schwartz?

This is what Dr. Erica Schwartz said:

Schwartz: The President would never ask me not to follow the law, but I will always follow the law.

Senator Hassan responded:

Dr. Schwartz, there are multiple examples of the President actively instructing people to break the law over and over again. So I hope you will update yourself on that because it’s not a satisfactory response to say he would never do that.

Yes, Donald would never do the thing he does on a regular basis. That is like saying Donald never lies. Give me a break. This is the quality of nominee we are getting from the Republican Party: people who cannot answer basic questions because the truthful answer might offend Donald. Schwartz could have simply said she would obey the law under all circumstances. Instead, she began by protecting Donald from a hypothetical that is barely hypothetical, given the number of times he has pressured officials to ignore legal limits or bend institutions to serve his personal interests.

Then, of course, there is the execrable Todd Blanche, Donald’s former personal attorney, although he still behaves very much like Donald’s personal attorney, who is also serving as Acting Attorney General. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened a two day confirmation hearing on whether to give Blanche the position permanently. Doing so would inflict untold damage on a Department of Justice that has already been profoundly compromised.

Blanche is the person Donald can rely upon to help with his Epstein problem, and he has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to bend over backwards to do exactly that. He is also the Justice Department official who personally met twice with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co conspirator in the rape and sex trafficking of girls and young women. Blanche was instrumental in Maxwell’s transfer to a minimum security facility, where she now enjoys privileges unavailable to most inmates convicted of comparable crimes.

Blanche is despicable, and yet he is poised to assume the most powerful law enforcement position in the country. During the hearing, Senator Dick Durbin asked whether Blanche would extend to Epstein’s survivors the same personal attention he extended to Maxwell. Ten survivors were sitting in the room. According to Durbin, none of them had been given an opportunity to speak with Blanche or anyone else at the Department of Justice or FBI, despite repeatedly asking to do so.

This is what Senator Dick Durbin asked Todd Blanche:

Let me talk to you for a moment about the survivors who are in the room. There are ten individuals who were exploited and abused by Mr. Epstein. They are here today. None of them have had a chance to speak to anyone in the department or FBI, though they’ve asked repeatedly. So can I get your word under oath that within the next thirty days you will personally sit down with these ten victims and hear their case in terms of what needs to be done by the Department of Justice?

This is what Todd Blanche said:

Chairman, I appreciate them being here today. I also have somebody from my office who’s spent her entire career working on cases like Mr. Epstein’s. She’s in charge of our task force investigating human trafficking. She’s available to talk to them.

Senator Durbin pressed him:

She can sit right next to you. She can sit right next to you when you meet with these survivors.

Blanche responded:

I have never said I will not meet with survivors.

Senator Durbin asked again:

Will you meet with these ten survivors? I’m asking you on the record.

Blanche replied:

If they have lawyers, as you know, I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them.

Blanche does not care about the survivors. He cares only about doing Donald’s bidding. Blanche had no difficulty personally meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and Epstein’s co conspirator, but when ten survivors ask him to sit down and hear them, he suddenly discovers procedural complications and delegates the responsibility to somebody else.

This is not Blanche’s first time obfuscating about Epstein and the Epstein files. During a Senate hearing in May on the Justice Department’s budget, Senator Jeff Merkley asked Blanche whether the Epstein investigation remained open. Blanche, who now leads the Department of Justice, suddenly appeared unsure what the term “Epstein investigation” even meant.

This is what Senator Jeff Merkley asked Todd Blanche:

I want to go on to the Epstein investigation. Is it closed or open?

Blanche responded:

When you say the Epstein investigation, what are you referring to, Senator?

Senator Merkley clarified:

Well, the FBI said last year in July that it had closed the Epstein investigation. So I’m just using their words. Is it open or closed?

Blanche replied:

I don’t believe the FBI said that. I mean, if you’re referring to…

Senator Merkley interrupted:

Well, you’re head of the Department of Justice. Is the Epstein investigation open or closed?

Blanche answered:

I guess I don’t understand what Epstein investigation means. The investigation of Jeffrey Epstein himself?

These people are liars, but it is so much worse than that. They are seeking positions from which they can destroy the rule of law in this country. Blanche, in particular, has demonstrated that he is absolutely and utterly willing to do so in order to protect one of the most prolific and recidivist criminals in American history, Donald Trump.

The evasions in these hearings are not isolated incidents. They are part of a pattern. Jay Clayton refuses to say who won the 2020 presidential election because Donald cannot tolerate the truth. Clayton claims ignorance about Tulsi Gabbard’s involvement in a federal raid he should understand if he wants to run the intelligence community. Erica Schwartz cannot simply say she would reject an unlawful order because even acknowledging that Donald might issue one is apparently unacceptable. Todd Blanche will meet personally with Ghislaine Maxwell but will not commit to meeting with Epstein’s survivors. He then pretends not to understand what senators mean when they ask about the Epstein investigation.

They all know what they are doing. They are denying reality, evading basic questions, and humiliating themselves because protecting Donald is more important to them than telling the truth. That is not public service. It is submission to a criminal boss.

The danger is not merely that these people lie. The danger is that they are being placed in charge of institutions whose legitimacy depends upon truth, independence, and fidelity to the law. The Director of National Intelligence must tell the president facts he does not want to hear. The head of the CDC must follow science and the law, even when the president objects. The Attorney General must serve the United States, not the person occupying the Oval Office.

Donald does not want any of that. He wants officials who will indulge his delusions, erase inconvenient facts, and protect him from accountability. He wants people who understand that their positions depend entirely upon refusing to acknowledge reality whenever reality threatens him.

That is why they are lying. They are not confused. They are not forgetful. They are not struggling to understand the questions. They know the truthful answers, and they know that giving them could cost them Donald’s approval and, therefore, their jobs.

Every one of these hearings is exposing the same thing. Donald is not building a government of qualified public servants. He is assembling a collection of loyalists willing to discredit themselves, corrupt the institutions they lead, and deny what everybody knows to be true in order to protect their criminal boss.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Trump

Hegseth Wants All Troops over the Age of 30 to be Tested for Testosterone

By dianeravitch

July 16, 2026 //

The blogger “Liberty Beats News” reported the following disturbing story. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is obsessed with the idea of “lethality” and “masculinity” that leads to stories like this one, as well as bias against women, who don’t have the same levels of testosterone as men. Even without the testosterone that Hegseth demands, women seem to be capable of exemplary leadership. Hegseth, however, continues to block most women from leadership roles in the military.

Blogger Liberty Brats News reports:

Pentagon Announces Mandatory Testosterone Testing for Troops Over 30 — And the Science Behind It Is Shakier Than Hegseth Is Selling It

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is framing declining testosterone as a fixable threat to military “lethality,” but the medicine tells a messier story: most people prescribed testosterone therapy never get properly diagnosed first, and the FDA has flagged real cardiovascular risk

WASHINGTON — July 15, 2026

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that all active-duty service members age 30 and older will be required to undergo annual testosterone deficiency screening as part of their existing periodic health assessment — branding the effort “The High-T Department of War” in a video posted to social media.

What Was Announced

Under the new policy, troops 30 and up will be tested annually; those under 30 can opt in voluntarily. If a service member is found to have a deficiency, testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is offered, not mandated — the choice to actually take it remains with the individual. Hegseth framed it as a health and performance initiative: “It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.” The Pentagon has not clarified whether the requirement or the treatment option extends to women in the military, whose testosterone levels also decline with age.

The Marketing Language vs. the Actual Medicine

Hegseth’s own phrase, “High-T,” isn’t a medical term — it’s borrowed directly from a social media fitness and masculinity trend, where influencers encourage men to chase higher testosterone numbers as a marker of strength and virility. That distinction matters, because the FDA has never approved testosterone therapy on that basis.

The only FDA-approved use for TRT is treating clinical hypogonadism — a specific, diagnosable medical condition involving genuine testicular or pituitary dysfunction, confirmed through repeated blood tests and documented symptoms. Simply having a number that’s lower than it used to be isn’t the same thing as having a treatable deficiency, and the FDA has never approved TRT as a tool for boosting combat performance, aggression, or “lethality” in men with normal age-related hormone decline.

What “Low Testosterone” Actually Means — And Doesn’t

Testosterone drops by roughly 1% a year after age 30, according to the Mayo Clinic — a completely normal, expected part of aging, not a malfunction. True testosterone deficiency, called hypogonadism, affects an estimated 5.6% of men between 30 and 79. That means the overwhelming majority of the men this policy will test every year have testosterone levels that are simply aging normally, not failing.

Testosterone Levels By Age: Normal Ranges 2026 Guide

A 2026 Endocrine Society study presented at its annual meeting found that most men who are already being prescribed testosterone therapy in civilian medicine never received proper, guideline-based diagnostic testing beforehand — meaning a huge share of current TRT patients may not actually meet the medical bar for needing it in the first place. One of the study’s independent reviewers, a reproductive endocrinologist at Imperial College London, called overprescribing “a problem of our time,” driven in part by corporate telehealth providers with minimal clinical oversight — a dynamic a mandatory military-wide testing program risks reproducing at scale.

The Risks Nobody’s Talking About in the Announcement

Testosterone therapy isn’t risk-free. The FDA issued a formal safety communication requiring TRT products to carry warning labels about a possible increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The research since then has been genuinely mixed — some large studies have found elevated cardiovascular risk in men on TRT, while others, including a comprehensive Harvard-affiliated review of 72 studies, found no compelling evidence of increased heart disease or cancer risk. What that actually means is that the cardiovascular safety of giving testosterone therapy to a large, mostly healthy population has not been settled science — which makes rolling it out across the entire U.S. military, framed as a performance and readiness initiative, a real-world experiment on hundreds of thousands of people rather than a proven intervention.

A Broader Pattern

This isn’t happening in isolation. The FDA moved in April to expand access to TRT more broadly, and Hegseth has spent his tenure building what he calls a “warrior ethos” around hyper-masculine physical standards — requiring all combat roles to meet a single “highest male standard,” warning against “fat generals and admirals,” and mocking transgender troops in public remarks.

Notably, Health and Human Services official Dr. Mehmet Oz has already publicly praised Trump’s own testosterone levels, according to RFK Jr., calling them the highest he’s seen in a man over 70 — a strange data point to have entered the public discourse days before this policy, and a reminder that “optimizing testosterone” has become as much a cultural signal in this administration as a medical one.

Bottom Line

Nothing about this policy is inherently sinister — screening for a real, underdiagnosed medical condition isn’t unreasonable on its face. What doesn’t hold up is the marketing: testosterone testing doesn’t measure “lethality,” normal aging isn’t a deficiency, and the treatment itself carries cardiovascular questions that haven’t been fully answered even in civilian medicine, where prescribing already outpaces proper diagnosis. Framing a hormone panel as the key to combat readiness sells better on social media than it does in a peer-reviewed journal.

Sources

• Forbes — “Hegseth Announces ‘Testosterone Deficiency’ Screening For Soldiers 30 And Over,” July 15, 2026. forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/07/15/hegseth-announces-testosterone-deficiency-screening-for-soldiers-30-and-over/

• Newsweek — “Hegseth’s New Military Testosterone Rules: Who Is On The Hook?” July 15, 2026. newsweek.com/hegseth-announces-new-required-pentagon-testosterone-tests-who-it-impacts-12200211

• NOTUS — “Testosterone-Fueled Troops? Hegseth Says Military to Begin Testing Hormones,” July 15, 2026. notus.org/defense/testosterone-troops-hegseth-testing

• Stars and Stripes — “‘High-T Department of War’: Hegseth announces annual testosterone screenings for service members age 30 or older,” July 15, 2026. stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-07-15/hegseth-approve-testosterone-testing-troops-22274442.html

• The Hill — “Pentagon to screen troops over 30 for testosterone,” July 15, 2026. thehill.com/policy/defense/5969935-hegseth-testosterone-testing-dod/

• Endocrine Society — “Testosterone therapy in men may be overprescribed, inconsistent with clinical guidelines,” June 13, 2026. endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2026/papaleontiou-press-release-endo-2026

• U.S. FDA Drug Safety Communication — “FDA cautions about using testosterone products for low testosterone due to aging,” fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm436259.htm

• Harvard Gazette — “Study finds no direct links between testosterone therapy, diseases,” Harvard Medical School review of 72 studies. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/01/study-finds-no-direct-links-between-testosterone-therapy-diseases

Categories Bigotry, Gender, Health, Injustice

Paul Thomas: The Proficiency Mirage: Florida Version

By dianeravitch

July 16, 2026 //

Paul Thomas taught in public high schools for many years, before becoming a professor at Furman College in South Carolina. He is a persistent critic of the “Mississippi Miracle.” He uses data to check on state claims. In this post, he fact-checks Florida.

He wrote:

Reading proficiency is a powerful data point despite it being a moving target.

When anyone refers to “reading proficiency,” that usually means a percentage of students who have met or exceeded an established score on a standardized test of reading.

However, “proficiency” is not a standard term. States tend to use “proficient” as grade level expectations while NAEP uses “proficient” as an aspirational achievement level (and “basic” more closely correlates with state grade-level proficiency).

To further complicate “reading proficiency,” not only does the measurement vary from state to state, but also the expectations for what percentage of students should be proficient at any grade is more a debate than an established fact.

How many students should be proficient in reading? Sometimes it is 90%; sometimes it is 95%—and then there are state goals, for example, in Florida, as reported by Aldeman:

A 10-part video series produced by the Children’s Literacy Project tells what happened. It makes a compelling case that these results are attributable to a distinctive public-private partnership between the district and a nonprofit called The Learning Alliance. The story starts with two moms, Liz Woody-Remington and Barbara Hammond, whose children were struggling to read. In 2010, they asked themselves: What would it take to get 90% of the district’s children reading on grade level by the end of third grade?

I find these statistics troubling, similar to concerns raised by Hansford:

Over the years, I have on numerous occasions seen the claim that 95% of students can learn how to read proficiently, so long as they are provided adequate tier 1/2 instruction. Truthfully, it has always stuck out to me as a strange figure, for three reasons. First, most academic research does not typically use percentages in this sort of manner. Second, I often see this figure unaccompanied by a citation. And third, it seems low; I find it hard to believe that 5% of students just cannot learn how to read. …For this figure to have scientific validity, it would need experimental research demonstrating it to be true. Ideally, I would want to see multiple large scale studies, due to the universality of the claim. Intrigued by the discussion, I put out a public call on twitter asking if anyone had a citation for the figure.

Hansford walks us through the research (thin at best) and reaches an interesting conclusion:

This all said, it does seem there is some level of support for 96% being a benchmark goal, for reading proficiency rates. While some might argue, this is too high, I worry it’s too low, as it is clearly possible to achieve better than 96%. For example, in the Torgesen 2003 paper, 98.4% of students were able to read at grade level. When I asked for research on this topic, I was given an anecdote about a school using EBLI that went from 87% proficiency rates to 100%, within a matter of years. Well this is just an anecdote. I do think 100% proficiency is—in many cases—possible and should always be the goal.

I think the points here that must not be missed are the role of “anecdote” in claims about reading proficiency as well as claims about surprising gains and outlier “miracle” evidence, such as, again, Aldeman highlights:

Even more impressively, low-income third graders at Indian River schools scored better than the statewide average for all students. And, perhaps not surprisingly, when we went looking for high-poverty schools that were nevertheless getting good outcomes in reading, we identified three of the district’s schools — Rosewood Magnet, Fellsmere Elementary and Pelican Island Elementary — for our “Bright Spots” list. Fellsmere in particular stood out: Based on its 99% poverty rate, our calculations predicted that it would have a third grade reading rate of just 29%. But its actual rate was much higher, at 53%.

Indian River County was never exactly a failing district, but a decade ago it was performing a bit worse than the state as a whole. It has since begun to pull away, especially in third grade. Coming out of the pandemic, 60% of district third graders scored proficient in reading in 2023. That figure rose to 63% in 2024 and then jumped again, to 69%, in 2025.

This reporting fits into a “beating the odds”approach that frames outlier evidence as the normfor an entire population.

The evidence [1] is overwhelming in education that outlier “miracle” evidence is usually misleading or false, and even more problematic, outlier success, when valid, is rarely scalable.

In short, “beating the odds” stories make for compelling journalism and politics but not for effective or reasonable education reform.

These stories from Florida also raise some red flags.

The organization promoting this reform, Children’s Literacy Project, is faith-based.

Like other Republican states such as Oklahoma and Texas, Florida is seeking ways to erode the separation of church and state, specifically in public schools.

Schools partnering with organizations to promote and support reform is not necessarily a problem, but the outside help does create tensions about ideology as well as erodes the likelihood reforms are scalable.

Another few aspects of Florida are not highlighted in the reporting but deserve attention.

Returning to measurements of reading proficiency, Florida is in the bottom quartile of states in terms of the standard for “proficient”:

Florida, like Mississippi, is also a state where relative success in grade 4 reading quickly evaporates by grade 8:

Again like Mississippi, Florida is in the top of states for grade 4 reading on NAEP, but drops to the bottom quartile in grade 8:

https://radicalscholarship.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-6.png

Finally, the media and political story most often focuses on reforms in reading programs, teacher training, school leadership, and school expectations; however, outlier and surprising gains in grade 4 reading are likely driven by grade retention (a harmful punishment) and not the celebrated reforms.

Notably, high-grade retention states like Florida and Mississippi are also the states with significant decreases from grade 4 to grade 8.

Florida has a long history of aligning itself with “miracle” education reform that proves to be a mirage.

Beware the current numbers game about reading proficiency—a measurement that changes with the political wind.

[1] Thomas, P.L. (2016). Miracle schools or political scam? In W.J. Mathis & T.M. Trujillo, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for ESSA. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Categories Accountability, Data, Florida, Gender, Literacy, NAEP

Elon Musk’s DOGE wasted $11 Billion by Laying Off Federal Workers!

By dianeravitch

July 16, 2026 //

Public Citizen, a nonpartisan public-interest organization, reviewed the cost of Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn cost-cutting techniques. Public Citizen found that at least $11 billion was wasted by hasty firing of civil servants, most of whom were paid for not working and many of whom were rehired because they were needed.

Douglas S. Pasternak wrote:

The Trump administration has paid federal employees at least $11 billion – and likely much more – not to work.

This total reflects only the lower end of estimated costs for the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) – inspired by Elon Musk in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM’s) infamous “Fork in the Road” email,[1] and it does not look at other federal efforts to reduce the number of federal workers.[2]

Nor does the total include the enormous social cost of leaving major government functions unfulfilled.

A Devastated Workforce

Since Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the federal workforce has declined by 278,282 individuals and 139,628 of those federal employees took part in the administration’s Deferred Resignation Program (DRP).[3]

The Deferred Resignation Program was initiated on January 28, 2025, with what came to be known as the “Fork in the Road” email, and those that participated were paid but exempted from work through September 30, 2025.[4] However, if you were eligible to retire by December 31, 2025, you could remain in the program and continue to get paid from October 1, 2025 until December 31, 2025, when you needed to separate from federal service.[5] A second DRP offer, known as DRP 2.0, began in April 2025 and paid employees through September 30, 2025, unless they planned to retire by the end of the year and could then be paid up until December 31, 2025, when they separated from federal service. The result was that nearly 140,000 federal workers were paid not to work for weeks or, in most cases, months.

Based on OPM data, Public Citizen estimates that paying federal employees in the DRP not to work cost between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026, the last month OPM posted publicly available data. The variables and assumptions Public Citizen made in estimating the range of costs due to the Deferred Resignation Program are detailed in our methodology section and two charts included at the end of this report.[6]

To put the cost spent on requiring federal employees to stay home and not to work prior to separating from federal service into perspective, the chart below shows several examples of what $11.1 billion could have been used to purchase, rather than paying employees not to work.

Table 1: What $11.1 Billion Could Purchase

ACTIVITY UNIT COST: WHAT $11.1 BILLION COULD PURCHASE

School Breakfasts

$1.91 per breakfast

5.8 billion school breakfasts

School Lunches

$3.08 per lunch

3.6 billion school lunches

Annual Daycare (full year, per child)

$13,262 per child per year

A full year of daycare for more than 837,000 children

Infant Childcare (monthly)

$1,233 per month

9 million months of infant childcare

Annual Family Health Care Premiums

$26,056 per family per year

Premium annual health care payments for 426,000 families

Annual Individual Health Care Premiums

$9,250 per individual per year

Premium annual health care payments for 1.2 million individuals

Public School Teacher (annual salary)

$74,496 average annual salary

Annual salary for more than 149,000 public school teachers

Annual Apartment Rent

$23,989 per year ($1,999/month)

Annual rent for 462,500 apartments

Annual In-State College Tuition (public 4-year university)

$11,960 per year

Annual in-state tuition for more than 928,000 students

Public Citizen’s analysis of OPM data concluded:

The Trump administration paid nearly 140,000 federal employees who took part in the Deferred Resignation Program at least $11 billion to stop working for the American public and to stay home or take vacation until they separated from federal service.[16]
More than 106,000 federal employees separated from federal service in September 2025 under the Deferred Resignation Program, and an additional 24,000 employees in the DRP left federal service by the end of December 2025.[17]
As a result of the DRP, the Department of Defense lost more than 48,000 civilian employees last year, the Department of Treasury lost 23,000 federal employees, and the Department of Agriculture more than 14,500 employees.[18]
Several federal court cases ruled that some of the Trump administration’s layoffs were illegal and demanded that terminated employees at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, Labor, and other agencies return to work. However, there are a multitude of ongoing court cases and some of those initial court decisions have been overruled in federal appeals courts.[19]
At least 10 federal agencies were forced to rehire employees that had chosen to take part in the Deferred Resignation Program because they realized these employees were essential to the agency’s Congressionally mandated work on behalf of all Americans.

The costs of paying federal workers not to work will continue to rise. Since the beginning of 2026, several agencies have offered new rounds of the Deferred Resignation Program permitting federal employees to stop working, but to stay on the federal payroll through September 2026, adding even more to the burgeoning financial cost of this billion-dollar resignation program.

Although the DRP was supposed to officially conclude in the first half of FY2026 (April 2026), the Department of Interior, for instance, recently extended its program offering federal employees who stopped working by April 29, 2026, to be placed on paid administrative leave through September 2026.[20] Those costs are not included in Public Citizen’s calculations because the data is not yet available from OPM.

Other agencies and federal departments are also following suit and beginning a new round of staff cuts under the Deferred Resignation Program. The Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, which has already shed half of its workforce since last year now intends to offer more employees the chance to enroll in the DRP beginning in mid-May 2026 and remain on paid leave through September 2026 before departing the agency, according to a report in Government Executive.[21] In February 2026, the U.S. Agency for Global Media also offered its staff a similar offer as long as employees accepted the termination offer by March 9, 2026.[22]

The costs of this exercise in downsizing continue to mount, and are replete with examples of poor planning, mismanagement, and financial inefficiencies and waste. The total costs of these terminations also include more than simply paying workers to stop working, they have had ripple effects throughout the government and on the American public.

Fired, Rehired, and Just Plain Bungled

Nothing about the Trump administration’s mass layoffs has advanced “efficiency.”

In many cases, the Trump administration rescinded the terminations and resignations of federal employees in the DRP and other programs in what appears to be systemic incompetence because the administration did not seem to understand the value or critical role of these employees in keeping the departments and offices they had worked for running. The Department of Labor,[23] Internal Revenue Service (IRS),[24] Food and Drug Administration (FDA),[25] Department of Agriculture,[26] the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),[27] Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),[28] Defense Information Services Agency (DISA),[29] the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),[30] the General Services Administration (GSA),[31] and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH),[32] all rehired workers who had been terminated or resigned after the agencies realized their critical missteps in arbitrarily dismissing tens of thousands of essential federal employees, after OPM told federal workers that if they took part in the Deferred Resignation Program they could stay home, relax, or travel to their “dream destination” while receiving their federal salaries and benefits.[33]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has conducted several analyses focused on the Department of Education, General Services Administration, and Internal Revenue Service related to the administration’s mass firings and resignations, including the Deferred Resignation Program, that clearly shows the process was neither strategic, smart, nor financially efficient.[34]

Categories Education Reform

Greg Olear: Mitch McConnell and the Death of Democracy

By dianeravitch

July 15, 2026 //

Greg Olear is a gifted journalist and thinker who has a terrific blog. He writes about politics, literature and whatever he wants.

This is his obituary for Mitch McConnell, who has been a toxic force in our nation’s politics. Mitch is probably not dead yet but we should remember his toxic legacy.

Olear writes:

What with Donald Trump losing wars to Iran, using the Justice Department and the FBI as his vendetta agencies, sic’ing his murderous ICE Gestapo on innocent residents, building concentration camps, hawking presidential pardons, fucking up the global economy, destroying our institutions, bulldozing the White House, bankrupting farmers, plundering on a galactic scale, withholding the money he owes to the woman he raped, fluffing Putin and Netanyahu, spewing crazy shit, and behaving every day like a complete and total asshole…

…and with the erstwhile Senate Majority Leader off the grid for a full month with some undisclosed medical issue and presumed dead…

…and with the media focusing its attention on the Renfieldian Lindsey Graham, who we know for sure bought the farm…

…with all of that, it’s easy to forget just how much demonstrable harm Mitch McConnell ~~has done~~ did to the people of the United States and to American democracy.

Since his funeral appears to be imminent, it’s only right that we give the Turtle his (dead) flowers.

When Donald Trump put his short orange fingers on Lincoln’s Bible in January of 2017, Mitch McConnell was already one of the worst Americans to ever draw breath. As of that date, no individual in my lifetime—not Nixon, not Kissinger, not even Ronald Reagan—had done more damage to the United States than the malevolent Gentleman from Kentucky.

I wrote a short piece about it on my now-defunct online magazine in July of 2017, under the title “Worst Americans: Mitch McConnell.” It read:

Rather than participating in the governance of the country through the time-honored tradition of compromise, he spent eight years as a living, breathing roadblock. The current Senatorial system of obstructionism has his fingerprints all over it.

He engaged in a SCOTUS staring contest with Obama concerning the Merrick Garland nomination and did not blink until Neil Gorsuch, a pro-corporation-anti-human conservative of the worst kind, was sworn in. This will have malefic impact on our country for the rest of my natural life.

When debriefed on the extent to which malignant Russian intelligence forces were compromising the presidential campaigns and the election, he threatened to accuse Obama of playing partisan politics if he went public with the bombshell. Once again, Obama acquiesced. With the election over, and no Constitutional clause for an invalidation of the result, he is in a position to make noise about this act of war by an enemy power. He has done nothing.

His wife, Elaine Chao, is the daughter of the Taiwanese shipping magnate James S.C. Chao, who is responsible for both personally enriching his son-in-law and for contributing to his campaigns, which would be fine if not for the big cocaine bust nobody paid any attention to. Elaine Chao serves in Trump’s cabinet, because of course.

He censured Elizabeth Warren for attempting to read a letter by Coretta Scott King at the confirmation hearing of inveterate racist and Putinist collaborator Jeff Sessions.

He is the prime mover in the Senate of the campaign to repeal Obamacare. The toxic healthcare bill he’s floated would throw 23 million people off insurance and lead to thousands of deaths and bankruptcies. It would also have a deleterious effect on the economy, as many thousands of jobs would vanish if the ACA were repealed. He doesn’t care. At all.

The story of his recovery from polio being financed by the government is bogus, but he did suffer from the disease as a child, and he did recover thanks to a program put in place by FDR. That he is actively seeking to deny medical care to so many sick children (that’s who’s on Medicaid, mostly: children) speaks volumes about his loathsome character.

He’s sympathetic to the Confederacy.

Worst of all, and quite unlike almost every Republican involved with Trump, he’s astonishingly good at his job. He wants us to die and go bankrupt and be ruled by the laws of the Christian right and continue to have our elections stolen by the Kremlin. And he’s savvy enough to make it happen. As GOP strategist Rick Wilson said, “Washington is littered with the bodies of people who underestimate Mitch McConnell.”

He’s the worst person in America. And arguably the most dangerous.

That’s hardly an exhaustive list. And it was written far too early to cite the second impeachment, which McConnell handled even more abominably than he did the first.

On February 13, 2021, Mitch gave a speech in which he condemned Trump for the insurrection—but made up a bullshit reason for not voting to indict him:

[O]ur system of government gave the Senate a specific task. The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal. We’re not free to work backward from whether the accused party might personally deserve some kind of punishment….

[F]ormer President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction….But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that Article II, Section Four, exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted. It’s the president, it’s the vice-president and civil officers. We have no power to convict and disqualify a former office holder who is now a private citizen.

Thus did McConnell concoct a technicality that allowed Trump to run for office again in 2024—even though, as Mitch well knows, under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump is ineligible to serve.

The #Section3 #Removal Plan: A(nother) Quick, Legal, and Nonviolent Way to End the Trump Regime

In December of 2019, in “Obstruction is the New Secession,” one of the first pieces at PREVAIL, I expounded upon McConnell’s role as sand in the gears of democracy:

DEMOCRACY IS NOT, and was never intended to be, a zero-sum game. The winners are not supposed to take everything. Change comes slowly and incrementally—often frustratingly so, for progressives. But the flip side is that the United States has worked pretty damned well for a quarter millennium, becoming arguably the greatest nation the world has ever known, because of the willingness of its political parties to compromise.

In the run-up to the Civil War, Congress bent over backwards brokering one compromise after another, in a valiant attempt to preserve the union. These compromises infuriated Northern abolitionists (“This word compromise, when applied to human rights and constitutional rights, I abhor,” trumpeted Thaddeus Stephens in 1850), just as they vexed the Southern slaveholders. Ultimately, the peace did not hold—the differences between slave and free were irreconcilable—but the point is that, in an era when members of Congress sometimes kicked the shit out of each other, politicians still went to great lengths to compromise.

Compromise only works when both political parties are willing to budge. If one of those parties abdicates its responsibility to represent the American people, if it exists simply to obstruct the work of the other—if it flat-out refuses to compromise, ever, about anything—the US system of government, always a fragile thing, breaks down.

After the election of 1860, the Southern states said, “Fuck it. We’re not working with Abraham Lincoln no mater what,” and they seceded from the Union. After the election of 2008, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans said, “Fuck it. We’re not working with Barack Obama no matter what,” and proceeded to obstruct every single thing he tried to do, large or small, national security be damned. To avoid compromise, the South chose Civil War. To avoid compromise, McConnell allowed Moscow to sabotage the 2016 election. Both acts are tantamount to treason. (That the Party of Lincoln slowly morphed into the Party of Obstruction is a sad irony).

Obama, after spending most of his first year in office coaxing the recalcitrant Republicans to work with him, eventually gave up, and, like Lincoln, used the vast powers of the office to take action without the rival party’s input. This worked, sure, but it was not without consequences. As I wrote in “Obama the Terrible” in February of 2014, after the story broke about the president’s drone strikes on suspected terrorists:

If a terrorist can be blown to smithereens at the whim of a single individual, then so can I, and so can you. If a terrorist can be held indefinitely without trial, then so can I, and so can you….

Today, the man with his finger on the button is the genial Barack Obama, a man I voted for, a man I like and admire, a man whose judgment I trust. The president strikes me as grounded, guarded, pragmatic, and smart. Whatever some may believe, Obama is not Hitler. But the next guy might be. And therein lies the terror. Not recognizing this clear and present danger is Obama’s greatest failing as president.

While he has not yet gone to these terrifying lengths, the despotic Donald Trump has certainly exploited the “executive order” precedents set by the frustrated Obama. The GOP refusal to compromise—to so much as allow a vote on Supreme Court nominees and House bills!—begat both Obama’s executive power grab and the “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference in the 2016 election (in Mueller’s words), which McConnell through his cynical inaction aided and abetted. The result is Donald Trump—corrupt, venal, vain, petty, criminal, installed and controlled by Vladimir Putin—presiding over the most powerful executive branch in recent memory.

Many factors contributed to this outcome, yes. But the root of the problem is the Republicans’ refusal to compromise. The GOP are not small-d democrats any longer. Mitch McConnell and his confederates are the modern heirs of Christopher Memminger, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Which should come as no surprise:

Fortunately, the Confederate States of America did not have a state TV network spewing pro-slavery propaganda to North and South. There was no Fox & Friends to normalize the brutal war crimes of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Sean Hannity was not there to fawn over James Henry Hammond and extol the virtues of the Mudsill Theory. Nor did Jeff Davis have a Rudy Giuliani scurrying around Transylvania, calling into question Robert Lincoln’s ties with the Pullman Palace Car Company. If so, the Civil War might have played out quite differently.

The GOP does not want to Make America Great Again; it wants to make America white again—and, especially, to keep the White House white. This is a tall order. Like the antebellum South, the demographics do not favor the GOP. The country is becoming more diverse each year. White people will soon be a minority in the United States. The demographic shift could well turn Texas blue—which would be the death knell for the Republican Party. A blue Texas plus blue California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey mean a Democrat POTUS for the foreseeable future.

McConnell surely understands this. He knows he’s running on borrowed time. If he can’t control the executive branch, or Congress, he has to infiltrate the judiciary—the only one of the three branches whose members, conveniently, serve for life. So far, this objective has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Obstruction has seen to that.

When it became clear that McConnell would never allow the Senate to vote to confirm Merrick Garland, President Obama should have gotten creative. FDR would have ordered Garland to take the seat after a waiting period of 60 days—something, anything to ensure not only that Garland took his rightful place on SCOTUS, but that the politics of obstruction failed spectacularly. Instead, Obama avoided a fight, assuming that Hillary Clinton would win and it would all be moot. This colossal error, an obvious blunder even at the time, guarantees a conservative judiciary—and perhaps, depending on the fragile health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, an extremely conservative one—for decades.

The lesson is this: If the new president finds herself with a blue House and a blue Senate, she needs to be relentless. She needs to move quickly, decisively, and fearlessly. Yes, she should attempt to engage the GOP. But at the first whiff of obstruction, she should ignore them completely going forward. It is not her responsibility to beg them to do their fucking jobs. Let the Republicans go to Canossa if they want a seat at the table—and once they are at the table, let them do more than refuse to play along. The politics of obstruction must be eradicated, just as the Confederacy was. Traitors should have no voice in the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The irony is, since I wrote that six and a half years ago, Donald Trump has eradicated the politics of obstruction. Ruling by executive order, by decree, by lawfare and intimidation, he has plowed through the feeble roadblocks set up by the opposition. By controlling the executive and judicial branches, he has made Congress moot.

The other irony is, even in semi-death, McConnell continues his life’s work of obstruction.

Yes, Trump has eclipsed Mitch McConnell as the worst American of my lifetime. So have other monsters Donald has empowered: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Stephen Miller, etc.

But without Addison Mitchell McConnell III, there would be no Donald Trump. Remember this: Mitch fed the cancer. He nurtured the tumor. He prevented the oncologists and surgeons from administering treatment. And knowing he possessed the singular cure, he chose to sit on his hands as the terminal disease ate away at our democracy.

That is the sum of his life’s work. That is his ignominious legacy.

For shame.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Kentucky, Obama, Trump

Block Todd Blanche: He Works for Trump, Not for Us

By dianeravitch

July 15, 2026 //

Rick Wilson explains why the Senate should refuse to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States. It’s not just that he has covered up the Epstein files and refused to obey the law ordering their release. It’s not just that he personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, after which she was moved to a comfy low-security prison. It’s not just that he negotiated the sweetheart deal to create a slush fund for J6 prisoners and Trump’s disgraced friends. It’s not just that he pledged that Trump and his family would not be audited by the IRS.

The problem is that he is Trump’s personal lawyer, not the champion of justice on behalf of the American people. He will never say no to Trump.

He should not be confirmed.

Wilson writes:

There is a particular species of Washington careerist who convinces himself that the oath he swore was a formality, a bit of throat-clearing before the real work of pleasing the boss begins.

Todd Blanche is an apex predator of that species. He is the man who looked at the Department of Justice, an institution built to stand between raw political power and the citizen, and saw not a sacred trust but a tool to please Donald Trump.

A very large, very expensive tool, with 115,000 employees with guns and badges and legal power that he could hand to Donald Trump like a caddy handing over a nine iron.

Trump has now nominated this man to be Attorney General of the United States, permanently, with the title and the office and the flag behind the desk. So let us be clear about what confirmation would ratify.

Let us catalog the sins.

Start with the original sin, because everything else flows from it. Todd Blanche does not know the difference between his client and his country. When he walks into Main Justice every morning, the man he serves is not the American people. It is the man who signs his continued employment.

Adam Schiff put it with the precision of a former prosecutor: at every turn, Blanche has been unable to put aside his role as Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer and represent the American people instead.

This is not a metaphor. Blanche literally was Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, in three of the criminal cases brought against him in 2023 and 2024. He sat at the defense table. He argued for absolute presidential immunity before the Supreme Court, co-authoring the brief that helped birth the monstrous doctrine that a president is a king within the four corners of his office. And then, having done that work, he was installed atop the very department that had prosecuted his client, where he could finish the job from the inside.

The Attorney General’s client is supposed to be an abstraction so large it can be hard to hold in your head: two-thirds of a billion people, but the Constitution and the idea that the law applies without fear or favor.

Blanche traded that abstraction for a man. He knows exactly who he works for. He has never pretended otherwise. That is the whole problem, and it is disqualifying before we get to anything else.

People confirm men like Blanche imagining the damage as prospective, a risk to be managed. It is not prospective. He has been running the building since April 2, when Trump defenestrated Pam Bondi for the crime of trying, and failing, to gin up prosecutions unsupported by facts and law. Blanche’s qualification for the promotion was that he would not make the same mistake.

Under his leadership, more than 16,000 people have walked out of the Department of Justice, including roughly a quarter of its attorneys. Think about that number. Not a purge of the top layer, a hemorrhage of the institution itself, the career prosecutors and agents and staff who are the actual muscle and memory of federal law enforcement.

He fired the people who worked January 6 cases. He fired people who worked the Jack Smith investigations. He moved to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leadership, the men who organized the assault on the Capitol, as though the whole thing had been a misunderstanding.

And then he pointed the emptied-out machine at new targets. The Southern Poverty Law Center got indicted on a theory so thin that federal law enforcement had reportedly known about and been aided by the very informant program Blanche stood at a podium to condemn. A whistleblower alleges one of his enforcers ordered Alabama prosecutors to rush the SPLC indictment through despite doubts about whether the case was any good. This is what a weaponized DOJ looks like from the inside: the case comes first, and the facts get conscripted to serve it.

Nothing captures the man better than the persecution of James Comey. The former FBI director posted a photograph of seashells arranged to spell “86 47” and deleted it. For this, Blanche’s Justice Department indicted him. Twice, actually, because the first grand jury effort was such a legal embarrassment they had to go back for another bite.

Understand what the government is alleging: that a retired official committed a felony threat against the president by arranging shells on a beach. Adam Schiff, who spent six years as a federal prosecutor, said he had never seen a case this weak, and offered that in the future, when some DOJ lawyer proposes bringing something this flimsy, there should be a new name for it. He also named the actual motive without flinching.
The case exists, Schiff said, because Comey is a political opponent, because the president called for his prosecution, and because Todd Blanche wants to keep this job.

There it is. The Attorney General of the United States, or the man who wants to be, running a federal prosecution not because a crime occurred but because bringing it is his audition tape. Bondi got fired for not being able to deliver the president’s enemies. Blanche learned the lesson. Comey is the receipt.

The same apparatus has been grinding away at Letitia James, at Schiff himself, at Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, whom Trump has publicly demanded be prosecuted. The through line is not evidence. The through line is a list of people who made Donald Trump angry.

Reread the Comey section. Retired federal official. Instagram post. Photograph of seashells arranged on a beach to spell “86 47.” Felony indictment. Not one grand jury but two, because the first attempt was such a legal embarrassment they had to go back for a second scoop.

Now the money, because there is always money in this corrupt griftorama era.

Trump had a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Blanche settled it, and the settlement’s centerpiece was a fund, an “anti-weaponization fund,” to compensate people who claimed the federal government had done them wrong. The total was set at $1.776 billion. They chose that number as a nod to the Declaration of Independence, which tells you everything about the self-mythologizing grandiosity of these goons. They wanted to loot the Treasury and dress it up as a Fourth of July parade.

Who would the fund pay? Blanche was asked, directly, whether Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted of beating Capitol Police officers could collect. He would not rule it out. Anybody in this country can apply, he said, and the commission will set the rules, as though he were describing a raffle and not a mechanism to funnel taxpayer money to men who assaulted cops on live television.

Pardoned January 6 defendants lined up to file claims. So did Michael Cohen. Even Trump’s own allies gagged; a Republican congresswoman called it a billion-dollar-plus slush fund to his face.

The backlash got loud enough that Blanche went before a House committee and said the fund was not going forward, period. But watch the hands. Judge Leonie Brinkema asked him to put that in writing, under penalty of perjury, a sworn declaration that the thing was dead in any manner, under any name. He refused. The Justice Department called her request unnecessary and declined to file it. A man who genuinely meant it would sign the paper.

Blanche of course wants the option to bring it back, and the tax provision buried in the settlement, the one that quietly cleared away audits of Trump and his family and his businesses, that part he defended and that part stayed. The slush fund was the misdirection. The immunity was the trick. Fortunately, a Florida judge nuked the immunity case this week, but I suspect Blanche will fight like hell to bring it back.

Gotta protect the client, right, Todd?

And then there is Ghislaine Maxwell, which is where the contempt for the public curdles into something genuinely dark. When the Epstein files became a political inferno that scorched Trump’s own base, Blanche personally proposed, at a White House crisis meeting, that he interview Maxwell himself. The convicted child sex trafficker. Nine hours across two days.

He was not there as a prosecutor. He offered her immunity for the conversation and made no promises about her sentence, which is a strange way to interrogate a witness and a very natural way to conduct a job interview for a pardon. Weeks later, Maxwell was transferred to a lower-security facility, reportedly in violation of standing Bureau of Prisons policy. The Deputy Attorney General of the United States flew to Florida, sat across from a woman convicted of trafficking children, and gave her a 300-page platform to rewrite history and distance Trump from his old friend, never once challenging her court-proven lies.

Epstein’s victims and their families are outraged over this nomination, and rightly so. Even Pam Bondi, in her own testimony, put the Maxwell decision on Blanche.

Blanche is running the largest cover-up in American history, protecting sexual predators and harming their victims…and that alone utterly disqualifies him from becoming A.G.
This is the tell. When the choice was between the survivors of the worst crimes imaginable and the political protection of Donald Trump, Blanche chose Trump, and he chose him by cutting a deal with the woman who helped commit those crimes. There is no version of the Attorney General’s oath that permits that. There is only the client.

I’ll repeat it again for the MAGAs in the back: the Attorney General does not work for the president in the way a White House lawyer works for the president. That distance is the entire point. It was built in blood and scandal, hardened after Watergate, when the country learned what happens when the Justice Department becomes the president’s personal enforcer.

The AG is supposed to be able to look at the man who appointed him and say no. To decline the weak case. To refuse the vendetta. To refuse to sign on to lies and oversights, no matter how much complying would help the President. That’s not Blanche, Blanche has inverted every one of those principles. He brings the weak case. He runs the vendetta. He signs on to every lie. He empties the building of everyone with the integrity to object and fills the silence with loyalists. He has taken the one office in American government whose independence is vital for the rule of law, and he has offered it, on his knees, to a man who wants to use it as a weapon.

The Senate is being asked to make this permanent. To take the temporary occupant who has done all of this in a matter of months and hand him the title, the tenure, and the flag. Every senator who votes yes is not voting for a man.
They are voting to erase the line between the president’s lawyer and the people’s lawyer, forever, and to reward the man who took the eraser to it with the greatest prize in American law.

Todd Blanche knows exactly who he serves.
It’s not the American people.

Categories Ethics, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Musk Insisted that No Child Died Because of His Cuts to USAID. Kristof Proves He Is Wrong.

By dianeravitch

July 15, 2026 //

When Elon Musk started his Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), one of his first targets was USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency that sent food, medicine and health workers to the world’s neediest nations.

Musk and his DOGE shut down USAID. On February 3, 2025, Musk boasted on Twitter:

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.

Clearly, Musk was very proud of what he did. American farmers complained that they lost $2 billion in sales that had previously been purchased by USAID to ship abroad to needy people.

Immediately, there were dire predictions that people would die without the food and medicine provided by the U.S.

Musk at first ignored the critics, but eventually insisted that no child had died as a result of closing down USAID.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times responded:

Elon Musk is newly minted as humanity’s first trillionaire, but the world’s richest man seems grumpy. And he definitely is not a fan of mine.

“Kristof is lying through his teeth,” he announced on social media this week.

I got on his nerves for pushing back at his claims that his demolition of the United States Agency for International Development last year did not cost lives. The fracas began after Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said that Musk had “possibly sentenced to death” a large number of children, and Musk retorted that it was “time to sue this liar.”

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk protested on social media. I noted that I had met many families of children who had died — and that’s when he concluded that I was lying.

Musk’s assertion that not a single child died is absurd, yet he doubled down: “They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

On X, I began to give Musk some names. Let me elaborate:

Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home. Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.

Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia. The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way. Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.

Achol Deng, 8, had been infected with H.I.V. at birth in South Sudan but had been kept alive by American-provided medicines costing just 12 cents a day. The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the resulting chaos meant that she lost her caseworker and access to medicines, and soon died of an opportunistic infection, health workers told me.

I could keep going. A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

These figures may not be accurate; we just don’t have solid mortality data, and the aid cuts have also reduced data collection. What I can say after visiting numerous impoverished villages is that aid cuts are unquestionably costing the lives of many children.

Some prominent conservatives leaped to the defense of Musk, saying in effect: Why is it our job to save the lives of children in South Sudan? Why don’t rich liberals write checks? Why don’t other countries do more?

Those are fair questions. But if any of us came across an ambulance that had run out of gas with a hemorrhaging woman inside, surely we would happily hand over a $10 bill to save her life.

Until Trump’s second term, American aid cost just 23 cents for every $100 of gross national income and saved a life approximately once every 10 seconds. Seems like a bargain to me. Certainly it appears wiser than spending billions of dollars on a war with Iran.

I say “wiser” because all this is not just about compassion but also about self-interest. Aid money serves national security and protects us from diseases. I’ve noted that the current Ebola outbreak in Africa may have gotten out of control precisely because we cut aid spending in the region.

Yes, other countries should do more, impoverished countries should be less corrupt, and our own aid can be allocated more wisely. But note that some countries in Europe are significantly more generous than America, spending up to 10 times as much on aid as a share of national income as we do.

Should liberals donate more to humanitarian causes? Sure. But compassion isn’t a liberal impulse — it’s a human one. It was evangelicals and Republicans who in 2003 started the single best aid program ever, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR; it has saved more than 26 million lives so far. Some of the most heroic aid workers I’ve met in dangerous locations have been Christian missionaries, from nuns to doctors; they would dispute the idea that empathy is woke.

It’s reasonable to ask how much we should spend or how we should reform the system. But why would anyone begrudge $2 bed nets or $4 malaria vaccines to save children’s lives?

So let me offer a challenge to Musk: Come with me on a reporting trip to South Sudan or Somalia or Mozambique. Meet starving children whose lives can be easily saved. Hold them. Look into their eyes. Talk to their terrified moms.

You’ll understand that these kids are just like ours, except that they didn’t do as well in the lottery of birth — and that just because we can’t save every child’s life doesn’t mean we should save none of them.

Back in the late 1960s, opponents of the war in Vietnam used to torment President Lyndon B. Johnson by shouting at him,

Hey, hey, LBJ,

How many kids did you kill today?

I can’t think of a word that rhymes with “Musk.” Can you?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, International, Poverty

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Musk Insisted that No Child Died Because of His Cuts to USAID. Kristof Proves He Is Wrong.

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