دسته: 4

How Republicans Preserve White Supremacy

Michelle H. Davis writes a thoughtful blog on Substack called “Lone Star Left,” where she reports incisively on politics in Texas. This column explains how white supremacists keep Blacks and Hispanic unrepresented and disenfranchised: gerrymandering voting district. What’s happening in Texas is happening in other states, especially the South.

It’s hard to remember that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Davis writes:

In the early 1960s, Black residents in Leflore County, Mississippi, comprised two-thirds of the population. Despite that, they had no political representation. In 1962, when voter registration of Black voters increased, the all-white Board of Supervisors (similar to a Commissioners’ Court in Texas) cut off federal surplus food aid, a lifeline for over 20,000 poor Black sharecroppers and farmworkers. This move came to be known as the Greenwood Food Blockade.

This move by the white Board of Supervisors exacerbated widespread poverty-induced hunger and malnutrition among Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. This laid the groundwork for long-term food insecurity, economic marginalization, and ongoing inequality in Mississippi that persists to this day.

This pattern is not new. Every time Black Americans have taken even a step toward political power, white supremacy has moved to snatch it back. In Greenwood, it meant starving families to stop them from voting. In Tarrant County today, it means redrawing district lines to erase Black representation, again, by a white-majority governing body.

What happened in Mississippi in 1962 wasn’t just about food. It was about control. And what happened in Tarrant County today isn’t just about maps. It’s about the same thing.

It’s not a coincidence. It’s not neutral. It’s not “routine.” It is the calculated removal of a voice that dared to speak up for all of us.

Commissioner Simmons has stood firmly against the racist agenda pushed by Judge Tim O’Hare and the Republican Commissioners on the court. She spoke out against the rise in jail deaths under their watch. She called out the cruelty of defunding Girls Inc., a nonprofit that empowers young women of color. She opposed the elimination of free rides to the polls, which made it harder for working-class people, especially Black and brown voters, to cast a ballot.

And now, she’s being punished for it.

Commissioner Simmons wasn’t just a name on a ballot. She is my commissioner. I voted for her. I campaigned for her. And like thousands of others in Precinct 2, I saw her as a voice for the voiceless, a woman unafraid to shine a light on white supremacy, even when it came dressed in a suit and tie.

That light scared them. So they tried to snuff it out.

What we witnessed today was retaliation. It was white supremacy striking back at a Black woman who told the truth. And just like in Greenwood in 1962, they’re using the tools of power, maps, votes, and bureaucratic language, to do what they couldn’t do in public: silence her.

But we see it. We name it. And we will fight it.

The new map that the County Commissioners voted on today.

They said the map was designed to secure a Republican majority, not to silence Black voters. As if those two things aren’t deeply intertwined.

It’s the same argument Greg Abbott’s lawyers made in Shannon Perez v. Abbott, when Texas was caught racially gerrymandering districts. Their defense?

A direct quote from Greg Abbott:

“It is not our intent to discriminate against minorities. It is our intent to discriminate against Democrats. If minorities happen to vote Democrat, that is their fault, not ours.”

That’s not a denial. That’s a confession….

Let’s stop pretending this distinction between race and party means anything in Texas. In Tarrant County, in Harris County, across the South, voter suppression by “party” is voter suppression by race. When you target the communities who dare to elect Black women, working-class progressives, young organizers, and civil rights leaders, you are targeting those communities on purpose.

They can say it’s about partisanship all they want. But we know what it’s really about.

Because when Conservatives talk about “conserving” something, they mean it.

They want to conserve white supremacy.

They want to conserve inequality, corporate power, and police brutality.

They want to conserve a system where jails are full, books are banned, teachers are silenced, and women don’t have autonomy.

They want to conserve a Texas where your zip code decides your worth, and where Black and brown voices are only welcome if they stay quiet.

And when people like Alisa Simmons refuse to stay quiet, they get erased.

But erasing her seat won’t erase her power, or ours….

Yesterday, far-right extremist Tony Tinderholt (R-HD94) announced he would not seek reelection to the Texas House. For a brief moment, there was celebration across Arlington. A man who built his career on cruelty, censorship, and conspiracy was finally stepping aside. But the celebration didn’t last.

Because today, just minutes after the Tarrant County Commissioners voted to dismantle Precinct 2, Tinderholt announced he would run for that very seat, Alisa Simmons’ newly gutted district.

And he didn’t come alone.

Cheryl Bean, another far-right extremist and ally of Tinderholt, announced her run for the now-open HD94 seat. A seat that was, conveniently, made safer for someone like her under the new maps.

Bean doesn’t even live in the district. She changed her voter registration to a new address inside it—an address she doesn’t own, according to the Tarrant Appraisal District. Her real home? Still outside the district lines. But facts don’t matter when the plan is to bulldoze through communities with precision and arrogance.

This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a coordinated political hit job, plain and simple.

A rigged map. A choreographed retirement. A handoff. A handpicked replacement. All timed to disempower the voices of Black and brown voters in Tarrant County. All orchestrated by Tim O’Hare and the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

They knew Simmons couldn’t be beaten fairly.

So they changed the lines.

They cleared the field.

And then they tried to rewrite the future.

But we see them.

We know the playbook.

And we’re not going to let this go unanswered.

To read the post in full, open the link.

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02/07/2025
The Senate Passes Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Deal, and Vouchers Are in It
The U.S. Senate just passed Trump’s massive budget bill, which renews tax cuts for the rich and makes deep cuts to Medicaid, about $1 trillion. Three Republican Senators voted against it: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine. Vice-President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Many hoped that Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would also oppose the bill but the leadership bought her off by adding special exemptions and benefits for Alaskans.

In The Washington Post:

Combined with the impact of Trump’s tariffs — which the White House has argued will help pay for the bill’s tax cuts and new spending — the bottom 80 percent of households would see their take-home incomes fall, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

“The right way to understand this bill is it is the largest wealth transfer from the poorest Americans to the richest Americans in modern history,” said Natasha Sarin, the Budget Lab’s president.

Shortly before the bill passed, I received two reports on the education section. Contrary to earlier reports, the Republicans restored vouchers. Apparently they satisfied the objections of the Senate Parliamentarian or decided to ignore them.

Leigh Dingerson, public school advocate who works for “In the Public Interest,” sent out this update shortly before the Senate passed the bill. The biggest takeaway: Vouchers are in again.

For the last 24 hours (more, actually), the Senate has been voting on a slew of amendments to the bill. Most are going down along party lines. At the same time, the Senate parliamentarian has been reviewing the bill for germaneness. She has struck out several provisions including, initially, the voucher language (this was Friday). But it was reinserted Saturday morning. Since then, some tweaks to the voucher language were made in an effort to win over some reluctant senators. Each time the language was changed, it had to go back through the parliamentarian.

This morning at about 2:15 am, Senator Hirono, along with Senators Reed, Kaine and van Hollen, presented their amendment on the floor of the Senate — an amendment to strike the voucher section altogether. That amendment needed 51 votes to pass. It got 50. All the Democrats voted in favor. All Republicans with the exception of Senators Fischer, Collins and Murkowski opposed it.

The voucher language currently in the bill has some important differences from where it started. Here are some key changes to the bill:
- The tax credit is permanent, and now unlimited. There is no federal ceiling on how much can be spent. Republicans removed the $4 billion volume cap on the total amount of donations.
- But!! Current language limits the amount a donor can get a tax credit on: The text now allows any individual to donate to an SGO for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit worth $1,700 (rather than 10% of adjusted gross income originally).
- States can now “opt in” to the program and must provide a list of approved scholarship granting organizations. And the bill clarifies that SGOs can only administer school vouchers within their state. This eliminates our worry that an SGO in Florida, for example, could hand out vouchers in Nebraska.
- The Senate has removed the provision asserting that there shall be no Federal control over private or religious schools. In other words, the door has been opened to federal regulation of schools funded with federal vouchers.
- The bill provides broad authority for the Secretary of Treasury to regulate the program, including explicit authority to regulate scholarship granting organizations and opening the door to regulate private schools.
So as you can see, there have been a lot of changes, some good, some bad.

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The NATIONAL COALITION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION released the following statement:

National Coalition for Public Education Denounces Senate Vote on Private School Voucher Program in “OBBB”

Today, the Senate voted to include an uncapped national private school voucher program in its budget reconciliation bill. This represents the first time a majority of the lawmakers in the U.S. Senate have ever supported sending public dollars to private schools. Now that both chambers have voiced their support for private school voucher provisions, it is likely to become law this year, forcing tax dollars to support private religious schools that can pick and choose who they educate and discriminate explicitly against students with disabilities.

Vouchers divert critical funds from public schools, which 90% of American families choose for their children to attend. Vouchers often go to students who never attended public schools in the first place, which drains taxpayer funds to subsidize private school tuition for well-off families who could afford it without money from the government. Under this harmful program, there will be no accountability for money sent to private schools, nor would the private schools be bound by key provisions of federal civil rights laws, which public schools follow.

If this becomes law, the federal government will give a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to people who give money to use for payments for children to attend private schools or be homeschooled. This was not done previously with any other 501(c)3 donation in our history, and no other non-profit classified as a 501(c)3) would benefit from this one-to-one tax lowering scheme.

America’s public schools educate all students in every community. Private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers, however, often discriminate against students for any number of reasons, including based on their disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, English language ability, academic abilities, disciplinary history, ability to pay tuition, or what their family looks like. The language that was in the House-passed bill about private schools maintaining policies that do not take into account whether or not a student has an Individualized Education Program (though these are not full protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) was stripped in the Senate bill and supporters of the voucher provision criticized this language.

Public schools are a cornerstone of American democracy. NCPE condemns Congress diverting billions of dollars away from public education and toward discriminatory, ineffective private school vouchers
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02/07/2025
Randi Weingarten: Trump’s Big Bad Bill Is Good for His Billionaire Buddies

The American Federation of Teachers released a statement by its President Randi Weingarten:

Contact:
Andrew Crook
607-280-6603
acrook@aft.org

AFT’s Weingarten on Senate’s Big, Ugly Betrayal of America’s Working Families

As we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.’

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Senate passed President Trump’s billionaire tax scam:

“This is a big, ugly, obscene betrayal of American working families that was rammed through the Senate in the dead of night to satisfy a president determined to hand tax cuts to his billionaire friends.

“These are tax cuts paid for by ravaging the future: kicking millions off healthcare, closing rural hospitals, taking food from children, stunting job growth, hurting the climate, defunding schools and ballooning the debt. It will siphon money away from public schools through vouchers—which harm student achievement and go mostly to well-off families with kids already in private schools. It’s the biggest redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich in decades—far worse, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, than the version passed by the House.

“But if you only listened to those who voted yes, you wouldn’t have heard anything like that. You would’ve heard bad faith attempts to rewrite basic laws of accounting so they could assert that the bill won’t grow the deficit. You would’ve heard false claims about what it will do to healthcare and public schools and public services, which are the backbone of our nation.

“The reality is that the American people have rejected, in poll after poll, this bill’s brazen deception. As it travels back to the House and presumably to the president’s desk, we will continue to sound the alarm and let those who voted for it know they have wounded the very people who voted them into office. But it is also incumbent on us to fight forward for an alternative: for working-class tax cuts and for full funding of K-12 and higher education as engines of opportunity and democracy.

“Sadly, as we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.”

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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

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02/07/2025
David Dayen: What Else Is Included in the Big Ugly Budget Bill?

Since this is a mostly education blog, I have covered the budget debate by focusing on what the GOP is doing to maim public schools and enrich private (especially religious schools). In the past, Republicans were strong supporters of public schools. But the billionaires came along and brought their checkbooks with them.

The rest of the Ugly bill is devastating to people who struggle to get by. Deep cuts to Medicaid, which will force the closure of many rural hospitals. Cuts to anything that protects the environment or helps phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. Well, at least Senator Schumer managed to change the name of the bill, new name not yet determined.

One Republican vote could have sunk the bill. But Senator Murkowski got a mess of pottage.

David Dayen writes in The American Prospect:

Welcome to “Trump’s Beautiful Disaster,” a pop-up newsletter about the Republican tax and spending bill, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in a generation. Sign up for the newsletter to get it in your in-box.

By the thinnest of margins, the U.S. Senate completed work on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Tuesday morning, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) decided that she could live with a bill that takes food and medicine from vulnerable people to fund tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy, as long as it didn’t take quite as much food away from Alaskans.

The new text, now 887 pages, was released at 11:20 a.m. ET. The finishing touches of it, which included handwritten additions to the text, played out live on C-SPAN, with scenes of the parliamentarian and a host of staff members from both parties huddled together.

At the very end, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer knocked out the name “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” with a parliamentary maneuver, on the grounds that it was ridiculous (which is hard to argue). It’s unclear what this bill is even called now, but that hardly matters. The final bill passed 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.

Murkowski was able to secure a waiver from cost-sharing provisions that would for the first time force states to pay for part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In order to get that past the Senate parliamentarian, ten states with the highest payment error rates had to be eligible for the five-year waiver, including big states like New York and Florida, and several blue states as well.

The expanded SNAP waivers mean that in the short-term only certain states with average or even below-average payment error rates will have to pay into their SNAP program; already, the language provided that states with the lowest error rates wouldn’t have to pay. “The Republicans have rewarded states that have the highest error rates in the country… just to help Alaska, which has the highest error rate,” thundered Sen. Amy Klobuchar (R-MN), offering an amendment to “strike this fiscal insanity” from the bill. The amendment failed along party lines.

The new provision weakens the government savings for the bill at a time when the House Freedom Caucus is calling the Senate version a betrayal of a promise to link spending cuts to tax cuts. But those House hardliners will ultimately have to decide whether to defy Donald Trump and reject the hard-fought Senate package, which only managed 50 votes, or to cave to their president.

In addition, Murkowski got a tax break for Alaskan fishing villages and whaling captains inserted into the bill. Medicaid provisions that would have boosted the federal share of the program for Alaska didn’t get through the parliamentarian; even a handwritten attempt to help out Alaska on Medicaid was thrown out at the last minute. But Murkowski still made off with a decent haul, which was obviously enough for her to vote yes.

All Republicans except for Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted for the bill. Tillis and Collins are in the two most threatened seats among Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections; Tillis decided to retire rather than face voters while passing this bill. Paul, a libertarian, rejected the price tag and the increase in the nation’s debt limit that is folded into the bill.

Other deficit hawks in the Senate caved without even getting a vote to deepen the Medicaid cuts. That could be the trajectory in the House with Freedom Caucus holdouts. But the House also has problems with their handful of moderates concerned about the spending slashes in the bill.

The bill was clinched with a “wraparound” amendment that made several changes, including the elimination of a proposed tax on solar and wind energy production that would have made it impossible to build new renewable energy projects. The new changes now also grandfather in tax credits to solar and wind projects that start construction less than a year after enactment of the bill. Even those projects would have to be placed in service by 2027. The “foreign entities of concern” provision was also tweaked to make it easier for projects that use a modicum of components from China to qualify for tax credits.

The bill still phases out solar and wind tax credits rather quickly, and will damage energy production that is needed to keep up with soaring demand. But it’s dialed down from apocalyptic to, well, nearly apocalyptic. And this is going to be another source of anger to the Freedom Caucus, which wanted a much quicker phase-out of the energy tax credits.

The wraparound amendment also doubled the size of the rural hospital fund to $50 billion. The Senate leadership’s initial offer on this fund was $15 billion. Overnight the Senate rejected an amendment from Collins that would have raised the rural hospital fund to $50 billion. Even at that size—which will be parceled out for $10 billion a year for five years—it hardly makes up for nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, which are permanent. The hospital system is expected to buckle as a result of this legislation, if it passes.

Some taxes, including a tax on third-party “litigation finance,” were removed in the final bill. But an expanded tax break for real estate investment trusts, which was in the House version, snuck into the Senate bill at the last minute.

The state AI regulation ban was left out of the final text after a 99-1 rejection of it in an amendment overnight.

The action now shifts to the House, where in addition to Freedom Caucus members concerned about cost, several moderates, including Reps. David Valadao (R-CA) and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), have balked at the deep spending cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

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02/07/2025
Republicans Race to Pass the World’s Worst Legislation to Please Trump

Andrew Egger of The Bulwark describes the chaotic atmosphere in which Trump’s precious Big Bad Beastly Budget Bill is being rushed to completion. Most Senators have no idea what’s in the bill. They know only that Trump wants it done by July 4. Why? Because he does. The Bulwark is the home of many Republican Never Trumpers.

Egger writes:

A 9 a.m. newsletter is, apparently, a poor fit for the ungodly timetables of today’s Congress. As of this writing, we don’t know whether Senate Republicans will manage to squeeze through their Frankenstein’s monster of a big beautiful bill. What we do know is that this has been one of the most ridiculous and embarrassing spectacles of “legislating” we’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing.

There have been three driving forces behind this bill. The first has been the “pass something or everyone’s taxes go up” pressure created by the soon-to-expire 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The second has been President Donald Trump, who took a shine to the simplicity of slamming together a bunch of things he wanted done into a single package and who has imposed an artificial deadline of July 4.¹ And the third is the Senate’s utterly dysfunctional procedures surrounding the filibuster, which make it basically impossible for majorities to pass new laws unless they get significant minority buy-in or glue them together into a “budget reconciliation” package that doesn’t need 60 votes.

What we’re left with is a bill that’s bigger than big and anything but beautiful. Although maybe it overstates it to even say we have a bill. As the Senate barrels to a vote (we think) they’re still crafting the actual text of the legislation. There will be no hearings, no comprehensive analysis, and certainly not enough time to read the thing. Whether it will pass now depends on whether Senate leaders can find a sweetener good enough to woo one of the four remaining Republican holdouts. Would any other institution operate in this way?

Yes, it’s common, in our sclerotic era of idiotic megabills, for such packages’ opponents to complain about “the process.” But the BBB has taken that situation to new heights.

It’s Trump’s bill, but even he doesn’t seem to be staying up to speed on what’s in it. He keeps posting that the bill will deliver “NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY FOR OUR SENIORS,” a provision that hasn’t been in the legislation for weeks.²

Massive policy amendments keep getting papier-mâchéd onto the package or peeled off by the Senate parliamentarian. One particularly egregious example is a new tax on wind and solar projects that threatens to bankrupt the entire fledgling renewables sector, which suddenly appeared in the bill during this week’s marathon cram session. Not only were a number of senators taken aback by the provision, many didn’t even know how it made it into the bill.

“I don’t know where it came from,” Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told NBC News yesterday evening.

“It wasn’t part of any consideration,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the holdouts whose consent the bill will likely need to pass. “It’s like, surprise! It’s Saturday night.”

Surprise! We’re just gonna cripple an industry and not tell you who did it!

Whether that provision will remain in the bill remains to be seen, as several amendments have been proposed to blunt it. My personal favorite is from Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who would leave the new tax in place but give the treasury secretary broad discretion to suspend it. Just what we need, more policy levers for the White House to pull to inflict or relieve pain on private companies at its discretion! What could go wrong?

Other tentpoles of the bill have remained more or less the same. It still contains a staggering increase in federal immigration enforcement, with only a pittance of new funding for immigration courts—a congressional blessing of the White House’s agenda of arresting every migrant we can now, and figuring out how to get around the courts to deport them later. It still blows a massive new hole in federal deficits: $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years, according to a weekend Congressional Budget Office report. And it will still slash Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion, knocking nearly 12 million people off their insurance despite Trump’s own continual promises not to cut the program. (But hey, no tax on tips!)

This last provision has been one of the most interesting to watch play out among Republicans online. As many have noted, the bill’s changes to Medicaid will hit many of Trump’s own supporters, who tend to be poorer and more rural, the hardest. But there’s been no grassroots groundswell against the package. Instead, many Trump supporters seem to be operating on the assumption—this is becoming a theme—that it’s other people whom the cuts will hit. Point out online that Trump’s own base stands to hurt from the provision and you’ll be swamped by a wave of MAGA derision: We see through these media lies! We know they’re only taking Medicaid away from fraudsters and illegals!

If this monstrosity of a bill ever becomes law, it will be interesting to see the unstoppable force of this delusion meet the immovable object of people actually losing their coverage en masse. For the sake of the country, we hope we never get to see it. That would be a mess far bigger than the process of putting this bill together.

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01/07/2025
John Merrow: It’s Not Enough to Oppose Trump. What Are We For?

John Merrow was the education correspondent for PBS for many years. Now, in retirement, he continues to write and help us think through the existential moments in which we live.

He writes:

More than five million demonstrators in about 2000 communities stepped forward to declare their opposition to Donald Trump, on June 14th. “No Kings Day” was also Trump’s 79th birthday, Flag Day, and the anniversary of the creation of the American army.

So now we know what many of us are against, but the central question remains unanswered: What do we stand FOR? What do we believe in?

Just as FDR called for Four Freedoms, the Democratic party needs to articulate its First Principles. I suggest three: “The Public Good,” “Individual Rights,” and “Rebuilding America after Trump.”

THE PUBLIC GOOD: Democrats must take our nation’s motto, E pluribus unum, seriously, and they must vigorously support the common good. That means supporting public libraries, public parks, public schools, public transportation, public health, public safety, public broadcasting, and public spaces–almost anything that has the word ‘public’ in it.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Because the fundamental rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution are often subject to interpretation, debate, and even violent disagreement, Democrats must be clear. Free speech, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, and other fundamental rights are not up for debate, and nor is a woman’s right to control her own body.

Health care is a right, and Democrats must make that a reality.

Conflict is inevitable–think vaccination requirements–and Democrats should come down on the side of the public good.

Because Americans have a right to safety, Democrats should endorse strong gun control measures that ban assault weapons that have only one purpose–mass killing.

REBUILDING AMERICA AFTER TRUMP:  The Trump regime was and continues to be a disaster for a majority of Americans and for our standing across the world, but it’s not enough to condemn his greed and narcissism, even if he goes to prison. Let’s first acknowledge that Trump tapped into serious resentment among millions of Americans, which further divided our already divided country.

The challenge is to work to bring us together, to make ‘one out of many’ in the always elusive ‘more perfect union.’ The essential first step is to abandon the ‘identity politics’ that Democrats have practiced for too long. Instead, Democrats must adopt policies that bring us together, beginning with mandatory National Service:

National Service: Bring back the draft for young men and women to require two years of (paid) National Service, followed by two years of tuition or training credits at an accredited institution. One may serve in the military, Americorps, the Peace Corps, or other helping organizations. One may teach or work in distressed communities, or rebuild our national parks, or serve in other approved capacities. JFK famously said “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Let’s ask BOTH questions.

Additionally: 1) Urge states to beef up civic education in public schools, teaching real history, asking tough questions. At the same time, federal education policies should encourage Community schools, because research proves that schools that welcome families are more successful across many measures.

2) Rebuild Our Aging Infrastructure: This is urgent, and it will also create jobs.

3) Adopt fiscal and monetary policies to address our burgeoning national debt. This should include higher taxes on the wealthy, emulating Dwight Eisenhower.

4) Adopt sensible and realistic immigration policies that welcome newcomers who arrive legally but close our borders to illegal immigration.

5) Rebuilding America also means rebuilding our alliances around the world. Democrats should support NATO and Ukraine, and rejoin efforts to combat climate change.

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01/07/2025
What Is Trump Afraid of?

Truth be known embracing Diversity does require a confidence and a faith in your fellow person, because to embrace Diversity is to accept folk or communities who have a different outlook to the one you are used to. To accept this as being ‘OK’ and no threat to you is the goal and sometimes you need to give yourself a mild talking to in getting there, or times not so much. But then that’s part of living.
Folk who object to Diversity are basically uncertain of and unsettled by difference. At its worse this festers and turns into prejudice and hate. They are embracing toxicity which will rot their beings leaving them wallowing in hate and whether they like to admit it or not- fear.
Accepting Diversity is liberating.
(and at times saying to yourself ‘Err. I don’t get it…But what the heck…..Compassion, Respect and Tolerance are the bottom lines, if those boxes are ticked…I’m fine with ‘it’,’

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01/07/2025
Trump Slashes Staff at Voice of America

Voice of America is known worldwide for its straightforward, unbiased presentation of world news. Trump placed MAGA enthusiast Keri Lake in charge. At his behest, she just laid off most of the VOA staff. Remember when America was great? We thought we had a message for the world and that the truth would set us free.

But Trump doesn’t want to “Make America great Again.” He wants to make America a land of bitter divisions, where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer and sicker, unable to get health insurance, medical care, good schools, or any opportunity to rise into the middle class. For that, you need unions and good jobs.

The New York Times just reported:

The Trump administration sent layoff notices on Friday to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom.

The layoffs, known as reductions in force, will shrink the staff count at the news organization to less than 200, around one-seventh of its head count at the beginning of 2025. They put Voice of America journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are let go on Sept. 1.

The termination notices are the latest round of the Trump administration’s attack on federally funded news networks, including Voice of America.

In March, President Trump accused the news group of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda,” calling it “the voice of radical America.” He then signed an executive order that effectively called for dismantling of the news agency and put nearly all Voice of America reporters on paid leave, ceasing its news operations for the first time since its founding in 1942.

Kari Lake, a fierce Trump ally and a senior adviser at the news organization’s oversight agency, U.S. Agency for Global Media, notified Congress earlier this month that her agency intended to eliminate most positions at Voice of America. Her letter identified fewer than 20 employees who must remain at the media organization, according to laws passed by Congress to establish and fund it. Friday’s termination notices leave around 200 employees.

Ms. Lake’s decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds U.S. ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” Patsy Widakuswara, a former Voice of America White House bureau chief who was placed on leave and is leading a lawsuit against Ms. Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said in a statement.

She encouraged Congress to intervene and to signal support for Voice of America, which was founded to combat Nazi propaganda and reported in countries that suppress independent reporting and free speech.

“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-America propaganda,” Ms. Widakuswara said. “Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice.”

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21/06/2025
Musk Is Gone But His DOGS Live On, Embedded in Agencies

Elon Musk left Washington, where he enjoyed the exalted status of being Trump’s brain. He returned to Texas, his new home. Where he launched into a Twitter tirade against Trump.

But he left behind a still large contingent of DOGS (Department of Governmental Subsistence).

Who are they?

ProPublica has been tracking them.

In an effort launched shortly after DOGE’s creation, ProPublica has now identified more than 100 private-sector executives, engineers and investors from Silicon Valley, big American banks and tech startups enlisted to help President Donald Trump dramatically downsize the U.S. government.

While Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man is leaving a network of acolytes embedded inside nearly every federal agency.

At least 38 DOGE members currently work or have worked for businesses run by Musk, ProPublica found in an examination of their resumes and other records. At least nine have invested in Musk companies or own stock in them, a review of available financial disclosure forms shows.

ProPublica found that at least 23 DOGE officials are making cuts at federal agencies that regulate the industries that employed them, potentially posing significant conflicts of interest. One DOGE member tasked with overseeing mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, did so while owning stock in companies the agency regulated.

At least 12 remain, on paper, employees or advisers of the companies they worked at before DOGE, a review of financial disclosure forms shows. And at least nine continue to receive corporate benefits from their private-sector employers, including health insurance, stock vesting plans or retirement savings programs. These employment agreements could create a situation in which a DOGE staffer would be shaping federal policies that affect their employer.

The people behind DOGE are largely men in their 20s and 30s, most of whom bring no government experience to the task. Many of them previously worked in finance.

ProPublica’s list — the largest of its kind by any news organization — allows readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of the people assigned to one of the Trump administration’s signature efforts. It comes at a crucial moment, as some of the first-generation DOGE members are leaving the government and a new crop is joining.

“Even though Elon Musk and some of his top officials are shifting their attention to other issues, I see no indication that the DOGE team members who remain will slow down their work to test the legal and ethical boundaries of using technology in the name of improving government services,” said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

While the Trump administration asserts it is the most transparent in history, DOGE operates shrouded by the shadows of bureaucracy.

Many of its staffers have deleted their public profiles, have wiped the internet of their professional backgrounds or were encouraged by leadership not to discuss their work with friends. At the behest of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court halted a court order Friday that would have required DOGE to turn over information to a government watchdog — challenging whether the group will ever be subject to public records requests. The Trump administration has banned DOGE staffers from speaking publicly without approval.

To cast a light on this secretive group, ProPublica began reporting in February on Musk’s influence inside the Trump administration, cataloging who was part of DOGE and how associates of the billionaire tech mogul were taking up senior posts across agencies. Our DOGE tracker, the first such list published by media outlets, is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with sources across government.

Today, we are adding 23 staffers to our tracker, taking the total to 109. They are spread throughout the government, from the Department of Defense to the General Services Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Open the link to see the list of DOGGIES.

By any measure, Musk failed.

First, he said he would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Then, he said he would cut $1 trillion.

Then, he dropped his target to $165 billion.

Even that number is disputed because federal courts keep ruling that DOGS firings should be nullified and workers should return to their jobs. Other “savings” were canceled out by the costs of benefits. By some measures, the DOGS game may have cost money, not saved it.

One thing is certain: the federal deficit will grow after Trump’s first year in office, thanks to tax cuts for the top 1%.

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18/06/2025
Arizona: Cost of Universal Vouchers Reaches $872 Million per Year
The Grand Canyon Institute has been tracking the growth and cost of vouchers and charter schools in Arizona for several years. The vast majority of students who take vouchers (almost 3/4). But this year, a larger share were drawn from district schools and charter schools.

The report contains a number of excellent graphics. Open the lin to see them.

This is the Grand Canyon Institute release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cost of Universal ESA Vouchers

Contact: Dave Wells, Research Director, dwells@azgci.org or 602.595.1025 ex. 2.

Summary of Findings
- 73% of Universal ESA voucher enrollees have never attended district or charter schools (including adjustments for students entering Kindergarten).
- In FY2025, however, net new Universal ESA voucher enrollees primarily came from charter and district schools.
- While the total cost of the overall ESA program in FY2025 is expected to be $872 million, the net cost after adjusting for where students would have otherwise attended is $350 million for those in the universal ESA voucher program. This represents a slight increase from the $332 million estimated by the Grand Canyon Institute last year.
The Grand Canyon Institute (GCI) estimates a $350 million net cost to the state’s General Fund in FY2025 (July 2024-June 2025) for the universal component of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program based on a student’s school of origin. This represents a slight increase over the estimated FY2024 cost of $332 million. The estimate assumes basic student funding weights.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee currently estimates the total annual cost of the ESA program to be $872 million, which includes the original targeted program and the universal component. Because student-level data on the universal program is not separated out by the Arizona Dept. of Education, GCI must estimate the origin of universal program enrollees. GCI’s estimate reflects the net cost the state would have incurred if the universal ESA voucher program did not exist. Almost every single child in the original targeted program had to attend a district or charter school for at least 45 days before enrolling in the program. GCI uses historical data on where the targeted students had come from previously, dating back to FY2017, along with current data on where all ESA students have left district or charter schools to estimate the distribution of students across district and charter schools for the original targeted program and the remainder are allocated to the universal program.

In FY2025, the net growth in the universal ESA vouchers was 7,660 of the total enrollment of 61,688. GCI estimates that 73% of ESA universal voucher recipients never attended a district or charter school, slightly lower than the rate of 80% in FY2025. This includes estimates for kindergarten students using ESA universal vouchers.

The primary driver of the change in FY2025 was a significant increase in the portion of net new enrollees from district and charter schools. GCI examined the marginal changes since last year and estimates that nearly half the net gain in universal participants of 7,660 from FY2024Q2 to FY2025Q2 came via Kindergarten. Analyzing changes in the portion of students previously attending a district or charter school, GCI estimates that less than 10% never attended (or would have never attended for Kindergarten) while half came from charter schools and just over 40% came from districts.

This change helped lessen the growth of the net cost of the program. GCI presumes that Kindergarten students do not have a record of prior attendance but would mirror the same distribution. Given that charter school enrollment is about one-fourth of district enrollment, charter schools have been significantly disproportionately impacted by the Universal ESA program.

Despite the change in FY2025, the majority of participants in the universal ESA program never attended a district or charter school should be self-evident. For FY2025, the Quarter 3 Executive and Legislative ESA report identifies that of the total 87,602 students enrolled in the ESA voucher program (targeted and universal), regardless of when they first enrolled, only 33,942 students moved from charter or district schools to an ESA. Virtually all targeted participants must first enroll in a district or charter school first. The universal program does not require prior attendance.

Access the full report here.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization, is a centrist think tank led by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers, economists, community leaders and academicians. The Grand Canyon Institute serves as an independent voice reflecting a pragmatic approach to addressing economic, fiscal, budgetary and taxation issues confronting Arizona.
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18/06/2025