دسته: 4

RFK Jr. Takes the Family Swimming on Mother’s Day—in a Toxic Creek

The New York Daily News reported on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unusual Mother’s Day outing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated Mother’s Day with his family by swimming in a contaminated Washington, D.C. creekused for sewer runoff.

“Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek,” Kennedy captioned an online photo putting him at the scene of the grime.

The National Park Service explicitly warns that Rock Creek is not safe for humans or animals.

“Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health,” the park’s department states on its website.

Swimming in D.C.’s rivers and streams has been banned since 1971 due to “high amounts of fecal bacteria from combined sewer overflows.” Signs at Rock Creek Park specifically tell visitors to stay out of the water to prevent illness.

Kennedy’s decision-making skills have been called into question, even by members of his own family.

“When RFK Jr decided to run [for president in 2024], he didn’t call me to ask for help because he knew I would oppose his candidacy due to his misguided stands on issues, his poor judgement and tenuous relationship with the truth,” said his nephew Stephen Kennedy Smith, according to NBC News.

RFK Jr. quickly dropped out of the race and teamed up with Trump, who then tapped him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in November.

Dozens of Nobel Prize winners and thousands of medical professionals warned that the political scion, who has no medical training, wasn’t fit to run the nation’s health programs. His conspiracy theory-based skepticism on vaccines has repeatedly raised red flags.

Kennedy’s own health has also raised concerns.

In April 2024, the New York Times reported that he once testified a parasitic worm ate part of his brainand died inside his head. He also said he’s been diagnosed with mercury poisoning, likely caused by eating fish carrying the dangerous metal.

Doctors with experience treating such ailments reportedly said patients can suffer permanent damage from those afflictions. Kennedy told the Times that wasn’t his experience.

He has not addressed his decision to swim in Rock Creek.

This guy is in charge of public health?

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14/05/2025
NEA: Trump Slashes Education Budget, Encourages Privatization of Public Schools

The National Education Association analyzed Trump ‘s proposed budget and finds that it contains deep cuts and massive support for privatization by promoting vouchers and charter schools. The proposal mirrors Project 2025 by turning Titl 1 for low-income students and IDEA funding into block grants that can be converted to vouchers. The overall goal is to undermine public schools and cut funding.

FY2026 Budget Request Slashes Education Funding, Shortchanges Students

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President Trump’s FY2026 “skinny” budget request to Congress, released on May 2, cuts non-defense domestic spending by 22.6%. The Department of Education sustains a $12 billion reduction, a cut of approximately 15.3%.

! Since the President’s budget does not list specific funding requests for every federal program, the 46-page document is a “skinny” budget. Congress ultimately has the power of the purse, but the proposal is a clear signal of the White House’s priorities: a massive 24 percent cut to U.S. domestic spending, and, privitazing our nation’s public education system.

 The narrative says the budget “maintains full funding for Title I,” but the numbers tell a different story. Title I and 18 unidentified programs are combined to create a single block grant, dubbed the “K-12 Simplified Funding Program,” then that block fund is cut by $4.535 billion cut.

 All seven Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs are combined to create a single block grant called the “Special Education Simplified Funding Program.” The approach perpetuates the current shortfall—the federal government now covers 13% of special education costs, far short of the 40% Congress promised when the law was passed.

 Programs slated for elimination include English Language Acquisition (Title III) and the Teacher Quality Partnership, which addresses the teacher shortage through deep clinical practice.

 The budget shifts costs to states and institutions of higher education to reduce the federal investment in today’s students—our nation’s future leaders and workforce—as much as possible.

 Regrouping specific, separate programs into block grants, in theory gives states more flexibility on how the money is spent. In reality, block grants usually lead to less funding and less accountability for our most vulnerable students. As the strings attached to the funding are cut, many states could maneuver block grant funds over to private school voucher programs.

 Amidst these cuts, the proposal calls for investing $500 million, an increase of $60 million, to expand the number of charter schools across the country. Charter schools, along with private school vouchers, drain scarce resources for traditional public schools.

May 2025

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14/05/2025
NEA: The Purpose of Block Grants is to Diminish Federal Responsibility for Education

Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).

The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.

The National Education Association explains here:

Block Grant Overview

Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.

Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.

Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently.

Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.

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13/05/2025
Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket: Sign up
This is a website that will keep you informed about the ongoing struggle to preserve our democracy.

It’s called Democracy Docket, and it is led by lawyer Marc Elias. Marc is a fearless defender of the rights of all citizens. He reports on threats to democracy and victories for democracy.

Open the link to sign up.

Here is the latest:

The Trump administration introduced a new budget proposal calling for a near $500 million cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the nation’s top federal entity responsible for protecting elections from hacking.

The Trump administration is looking into suspending people’s right to challenge their incarceration in court, to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, White House aide Stephen Miller said today.

Though Miller described it as a “privilege,” the writ of habeas corpus is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitutionand can only be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

A second lawsuit was filed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenging the state’s congressional map. Voters, represented by the Campaign Legal Center, argue the map unevenly distributes the population, violating the state constitution.

The Iowa Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that allowed voting materials to be translated into other languages, despite a state law requiring documents to be distributed in English only. The case was dismissed due to lack of standing.

A pro-voting group is challenging Wyoming’s House Bill 156, which mandates documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The lawsuit alleges the measure violates the First, Fifth, and 14th Amendments by creating barriers for eligible voters.

The group argues the law disproportionately affects women, Hispanic, young, and low-income residents. This comes amid already low civic participation in Wyoming, where only 65% of eligible voters registered and 60% voted in 2024.

Trump wants us to believe he is all-powerful. He wants us to believe that opposing him is futile or worse. He wants you to accept that there’s nothing you can do to limit his ability to harm our country and our democracy. But that simply isn’t true.

Marc shares 10 things you can do to stand up to Trump and protect our democracy.
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13/05/2025
Texas: More Than 700 Cases of Measles Reported

In 2000, the contagious disease measles was officially eradicated in the United States. However, since the rise of anti-vaccine anxieties during the COVID pandemic, a growing number of parents have refused to let their children be vaccinated.

Texas is the center of a measles outbreak. 702 children have measles; 95% had not been vaccinated. Two have died, neither of them had been vaccinated. The national number is certainly larger.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

The measles outbreak that started in the South Plains region of Texas surpassed 700 cases on Tuesday, according to health officials.

The latest update from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows the state has seen 702 cases of measles since the outbreak began spreading in late January. The outbreak, which has also spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, is the largest in the United States since measles was declared eliminated in the country in 2000.

Two children, an 8-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl, died after contracting the virus, and 91 people have been hospitalized. Neither child who died had received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, and they did not have any underlying medical conditions, according to the DSHS.

Roughly two-thirds of cases in Texas have been in children and teens. More than 95% have been in individuals who are unvaccinated, or whose vaccination status is unknown.

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13/05/2025
Bill Kristol: Trump’s Sugar Daddy Gives Him a Luxurious Airplane

Never-Trumper Bill Kristol espies hypocrisy in Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million gift from Qatar. Qatar, he points out, funds Hamas and the leading anti-Israel campus protest group. Now it also funds the President of the United Ststes!

He writes:

Trump can’t abide flying around in crusty, old Air Force One. Qatar—funder of both Hamas and the leading U.S. college Gaza protest group—just happens to have a spare, pimped-out 747 lying around, which they’d like to gift to Trump so he can use that instead. Pay no attention to the complete hypocrisy of an administration that says that students protesting for Gaza are a threat to our foreign policy.

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13/05/2025
Mothers Against Greg Abbott Sums Up the Awful Record of the Texas Legislature
You know the Bad MAGA, the one that wants to drag us back a century.

There is also a good MAGA: Mothers Against Greg Abbott.

It’s led by Nancy Thompson, who spends her time trying to help others, unlike the other MAGA.

My leading nominee for silliest bill of the year is this one: “Rep. Stan Gerdes filed HB 54, a bill that aims to ban non-human behaviors in Texas public schools.” This is an adult man who took seriously the absurd claim that some children asked for litter boxes because they identify as cats. That’s a wack-a-doo rumor, not a reality. Why not legislate about the best way to respond to men in flying saucers if they should land and disembark in Texas?

This her latest report on the Republican-dominated legislature in Texas, which does nothing to help others:

TX LEGE BREAKDOWN

📚 Education Legislation 📚

On April 24th, the Texas Senate voted to redirect $1 billion in taxpayer funds to their favored private schools in passing Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill. We (and tens of thousands of folks across Texas) organized hard to stop it, but a final phone call from Donald Trump sealed the deal. This scam on the taxpayers, I mean voucher bill, has just been signed into law by Abbott.

While voucher programs and charter schools are getting our hard-earned pennies, the TX Lege hasn’t passed a single public education funding bill yet this session. This is BS.

🏠 Housing and Water Legislation 🏠

HB 32 and its Senate companion, SB 38, would escalate the Texas housing crisis by making evictions faster, easier, and far more common. These are being sold as a fix for “squatters,” but in reality, the bills are Trojan horse policies that would dismantle due process, weaken eviction warnings, and reduce opportunities for legal protections for all renters in Texas.

😵‍💫 Wtf Legislation 😵‍💫

The Texas legislature has considered a record number of bills this year that only serve to bully transgender people. On April 23rd, the Senate approved SB 240, the ridiculously named “Texas Women’s Privacy Act,”which requires Texans to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with the gender assigned on their birth certificate — even if they’ve transitioned.

The Texas House passed HB 366, a bill that would make it a crime to distribute altered media, including political memes, without a government-approved disclaimer. Violators could face up to a year in jail. WTF?

Rep. Stan Gerdes filed HB 54, a bill that aims to ban non-human behaviors in Texas public schools.

The Texas Senate passed SB 1870, a bill that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana.

The Texas House is expected to consider House Bill 2436, to exempt law enforcement officers from being charged for “deadly conduct” (killing members of the public) while in the line of duty. The Senate approved a similar bill in early April. This is a dangerous escalation of the power of state violence and a lack of accountability for the harm it causes.

The Texas Senate also approved SCR 42, which declares that the state only recognizes two genders. Let’s be clear: trans and intersex people have always existed. This is just more dangerous bullying toward a vulnerable minority from Texas Republicans.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Follow us on social media — we’ll be posting live updates, actions you can take to speak out on legislation, and more.

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It’s important to be clear-eyed about the damage Texas Republicans — arm in arm with the Trump Administration — are inflicting on our state. When the consequences come, like underfunded classrooms, law enforcement officers shielded from legal consequences, and discrimination and violence against vulnerable people, we need to be ready to make sure Texans know who to hold accountable – Texas Republicans.

Get ready to use your voice when the time comes.

Nancy Thompson
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12/05/2025
Financial Times: Bill Gates Slams Elon Musk

Bill Gates is one of the few billionaires and power players who have stood up to the South African-born bully, Elon Musk.

I’ve had my differences with Gates over his disastrous intrusions into “reforming” education. First, he thought that small schools were “the answer,” and small schools sprouted in many cities while beloved high schools with multiple pathways to graduation were closed. He climbed aboard the charter idea, funding many charters and underwriting the propagandistic charter-pushing film “Waiting for Superman,” in which every charter does its own thing.

Then he decided that “the answer” was standardization, and he bought and paid for the Common Core standards and urged alignment with tests, textbooks, and teacher training. Simultaneously, he funded districts to evaluate teachers by the rise or fall of student scores, and Arne Duncan made that practice a key element of his $5 billion Race to the Top. None of those data-based, data-driven policies worked. They were correct on paper but failed in reality.

Happily, he has turned his attention to problems where he can make a real difference: saving lives in impoverished nations.

He was appalled when Musk, his fellow billionaire, peremptorily shut down USAID. And he is not afraid of Musk or Trump.

The UK Financial Times interviewed Gates:

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates ratcheted up his feud with Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” through what he said were misguided cuts to US development assistance.

Gates, who is announcing a plan to accelerate his philanthropic giving over the next 20 years and close down the Gates Foundation altogether in 2045, said in an interview that the Tesla chief had acted through ignorance.

In February, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in effect shut down the US Agency for International Development, the main conduit for US aid, saying it was “time for it to die”.

The co-founder of Microsoft, and once the world’s richest man himself, said the abruptness of the cuts had left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times.

Gates said Musk had cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, that prevents women transmitting HIV to their babies, in the mistaken belief that the US was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East. “I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” he said.

Gates, 69, on Thursday announced plans to spend virtually his entire fortune over the next 20 years, during which time he estimates his foundation will spend more than $200bn on global health, development and education against $100bn over the previous 25 years. The Gates Foundation will close its doors in 2045, decades earlier than previously envisaged.

Good for you, Bill!

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12/05/2025
Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month
Why did Trump run for President in 2024?
1. To stay out of jail.
2. To destroy our government.
3. To make money.
All three answers are correct. Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, recounts the latest financial scandal associated with Trump–the sale of Trump crytocurrency that is pulling billions into family pockets. And he tries to figure out why the story appears to have faded, instead of blowing up as a mind-boggling violation of the emoluments clause. That’s the part of the Constitution that says Presidents are not supposed to be getting rich by being President, especially by any sort of gift from foreign powers. Trump evaded that restriction in his first term, when he owned the hotel closest to the White Hiuse, and visiting potentates rented the most lavish suites. That was small potatoes. An investment firm in Abu Dhabi just put $2 billion into Trump cryptocurrency. Tomasky asks: does anyone care?

He writes:

Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a business professor and popular podcaster, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”

Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution.

And now, we know that he’s having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And The New York Times had a terrific report this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit.

I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.

For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.

They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.

After the election, I wrote a column that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, One America News Network, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right.

Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as the Times put it, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it helped. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.

Newsflash: They’re still at it.

First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, reports Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade.

I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who charged that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 report that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by launching their own coins, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)

But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure & the Trump Boom” was the theme of one recent Laura Ingraham segment.

So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin announced the creation one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?)

And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.

But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more.

It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself.

And just remember—a billion dollars a month.

Don’t be surprised to see Trump-branded stuff on the White House website any day now. Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, MAGA hats, Trump watches, Trump trading cards, etc. why not?
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12/05/2025
Republicans Planning Major Increase in Tax on College Endowments

Republicans are looking for ways to subsidize tax cuts for billionaires, and one likely target is endowments of colleges and universities. This move is an extension of Trump’s war against elite higher education, especially Harvard.

In Trump’s 2017 tax bill, he levied a tax of 1.4% on institutions of higher education with large endowments, relative to their enrollments. Current Republican thinking is a huge increase in that tax.

Be it noted that endowments fund scholarships for low-income students. The proposed taxes are mean-spirited and short-sighted.

Politico reported:

Endowments valued at $750,000 or less per student would be taxed at the current 1.4 percent rate, according to two of those people. Endowments valued between $750,000 to $1million per student would be taxed at a 10 percent rate and those greater than $1 million per student would be taxed at a 20 percent rate…

Under Trump’s 2017 tax bill, only universities with more than 500 students and endowment assets surpassing $500,000 per student face the current 1.4 percent tax. Ways and Means Republicans have considered both bumping up that tax rate significantly and applying it to a broader mix of U.S. colleges.

A menu of policies prepared by the House Budget Committee and obtained by POLITICO in January suggested bumping up the endowment tax to 14 percent. That would raise $10 billion over 10 years, according to the document.

One bill, introduced by Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), would raise the excise tax on endowment profits up to 21 percent.

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12/05/2025