This song was recorded in a 1933 film, “Gold Diggers of 1933.” This song stars Joan Blondell and Etta Moten and was choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It is a powerful anti-war statement. The troops march to war in glory and return broken or in caskets.
REMEMBER MY FORGOTTEN MAN
The startling transformation of Texas from a solid red state to a remarkably blue state is still hard to believe. For years, Texas Democrats have prayed for this change. They have been disappointed so many times that the reality is hard to absorb. Democrats won every statewide office, won control of the Texas House, and missed winning the state senate by one vote.
Dan Solomon of The Texas Monthly asks, what can Democrats accomplish?
He writes:
Back in January, Dan Patrick drew up the first charges on his biannual list of priorities for next year’s legislative session. In it, he outlined a handful of items that he would task the Ninetieth Texas Legislature to address, starting with “Preventing Sharia Law in Texas” and concluding with “Promoting America & Texas First in Our Schools.” It seemingly hadn’t occurred to the longtime lieutenant governor that he had to win an election first.
And why should it have? Patrick had cruised to victory in three previous elections—most recently in 2022, by an easy ten-point margin—and the last Republican incumbent major statewide officeholder to lose a general election was Bill Clements, back in 1982. There was little reason to make plans for anything other than another term of Texas under Republican control.
But then Texas voters chose to sweep Republicans out of power, electing Democrats to every statewide office on the ballot. They will now assume the levers of power in Texas, which have been oriented around one-party control. Patrick was a lead architect of that structure, implementing a rule that allowed Republicans to bring legislation to the Senate floor without a single Democratic vote and changing the precise number of votes required to advance a bill based on how many seats the GOP held in the chamber.
With Democrats preparing to assume control of many of the state’s institutions—only the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Railroad Commission still have GOP majorities—there are questions about what their governance of Texas will look like in practice. Let’s explore some of the most immediate and consequential policy matters now in play.
Under Greg Abbott—and Rick Perry before him—Texas has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act—one of only ten holdout states to decline federal benefits. In practical terms, accepting Medicaid expansion would allow Texans who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance on the ACA marketplace to obtain subsidies through the federal government. Forty states have opted into this; Texas is the largest that hasn’t, and expansion could help more than a million Texans get coverage. Texans alone represent 46 percent of the entire U.S. population that could benefit from expansion, per a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa pledged to expand Medicaid during her campaign, but the decision isn’t strictly hers. Implementing it will require the Legislature to act, and while Democrats claimed control of the House, Republicans maintain a majority in the upper chamber. Because the federal government covers around 90 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion, the issue will be a test of one of the key questions facing the Lege this year: How conciliatory are Republicans in the Senate feeling? On its face, Medicaid expansion is an easy compromise—it costs Texans little, it has been implemented successfully even in Republican-controlled states around the country, and hospitals have long supported it.
If the Senate opts to find opportunities for bipartisan compromise, Medicaid expansion is likely the starting place; if the members of the chamber’s Republican majority won’t play ball, we’re all in for a good reminder of how unproductive a Texas legislative session can be.
The terms of more than a dozen regents at Texas universities are set to expire shortly after Hinojosa takes office. She’ll appoint their replacements, subject to Senate confirmation. Hinojosa alone won’t shift the balance of power at any university—appointments are staggered, and Abbott appointees will still make up the majority of the folks atop the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the rest of the state’s public universities, at least until 2029. But those institutions have been shaped by more than simply the legal power the current and previous governors have exercised—and it’s an open question whether Hinojosa will be able to wield influence and apply pressure in a manner similar to how Abbott and Perry did before her.
UT-Austin and Texas A&M have been roiled by political pressure in recent years. Last year, A&M president Mark Welsh resigned after spending several months as a punching bag for conservatives (including Abbott). Welsh’s sins were mostly related to a trip the university was sponsoring to a conference that Abbott decried as too woke on X, and to a viral video in which an instructor discussed gender in ways that were unpopular with conservatives. Abbott didn’t possess the power to fire Welsh, but he was able to leverage his control over the board of regents to force an otherwise well-liked administrator to step down. At UT, meanwhile, Jim Davis, a former Ken Paxton aide, took over as president last year despite lacking any academic background, and he has been working to remake the institution in a conservative image.
Hinojosa can’t fire Davis any more than Abbott could fire Welsh—but Abbott wanted Welsh out, and out he went. Will Hinojosa be able to wield similar influence, or was Abbott’s leverage the product of more than a decade spent consolidating power within the state? Even if Hinojosa is not able to directly replace the president—should that be her desire—to what extent do public universities that oriented themselves to appease right-wing state leaders change course now that Texas voters have made this a blue state?
School vouchers were the subject of Abbott’s most challenging legislative fight. They’re deeply unpopular among rural Texans, who have far fewer education options than their urban counterparts. In 2023, rural Republican legislators who represent such districts joined the Democratic caucus to block the passage of a school-choice bill. After taking $12 million from a pro-voucher out-of-state billionaire, Abbott retaliated by backing primary challengers to those incumbents, knocked off most of them, and then was able to pass the state’s voucher programin the 2025 session. In 2026, voters responded by choosing to put Democrats in charge of the state. (A significantly larger percentage of rural voterswent blue than in recent history.)
Hinojosa campaigned on ending the voucher program. The newly Democratic House could defund it in the next budget, and Lieutenant Governor–elect Vikki Goodwin, who will preside over the Senate, could hold the line in the upper chamber. If that doesn’t happen, Hinojosa does have line-item veto power to drain the program of funding.
Data centers will be another key issue. During the campaign, Abbott instituted a moratorium on environmental permitting and grid connections for new projects. Hinojosa has vowed to maintain that moratorium, which can slow down such projects, if not fully stop them indefinitely, until the Lege passes new rules for the industry. She’s promised that any already-permitted projects can continue.
On its face, the politics of the issue appear bipartisan—voters around the state don’t like data centers, and Republicans have responded by signaling opposition to such projects. This is an area where Hinojosa ought to be able to deliver.
That’ll be important, because whether Democrats deliver on the issues that animated voters also has electoral implications. It’s admittedly early to look to 2028—but there is no greater force shaping national presidential politics than the possibility of Texas as a true swing state. Was what happened on election night a onetime fluke driven by once-in-a-generation circumstances or a true realignment in Texas politics?
The answer is likely to be partially determined by how Democratic control of Texas actually plays out. For years, a core message to voters from the state’s Republican leaders was that electing Democrats risked everything they currently enjoyed about the state—that newcomers to Texas moved here to get away from Democratic mismanagement of blue states, and that longtime residents enjoyed low taxes and general prosperity that had started with the so-called Texas Miracle.
If it turns out that Texans can still enjoy living in a blue state as much as they did under Republican leadership, then voting for Democrats consistently, even if there’s not a full sweep in every election from here on out, starts to seem a lot more likely. The electoral college map looks wildly different with a blue Texas than a reliably red one; if Republicans don’t have our state, then the map that gave Trump 312 votes in 2024 is no longer a winning one, provided the GOP loses literally any other state (it can’t even spare a Dakota!). Joe Biden’s 2020 map with a blue Texas becomes an overwhelming landslide. National politicians and their advisers will spend a lot of time trying to understand whether the successes Democrats achieved in 2026 are durable, fluky, or something else—and a lot of the answer to that question will rely on how the statewide slate of elected Dems performs for Texans over the next two years.
Jess Piper and her family live on a farm in Missouri. She has used her considerable voice to urge Democrats to contest every election. In the past, the Democratic Party assumed that its candidates would lose in rural districts and failed even to put up a candidate. People like her would go to the polls and find no one to vote for. Jess writes a regular blog called “The View from Rural Missouri,” where she speaks up for those who have been neglected like her. She has been a spokeswoman for “Dirt Road Democrats,” and is now active in Blue Missouri. She is a retired teacher who taught literature for many years.
She wrote soon after the conclusion of the midterm elections:
I stopped at Casey’s Wednesday morning to get some gas, and as I walked across the parking lot, I saw a local activist I often work with…her name is Nancy.
I knew it was her Expedition because of all of the bumper stickers, but when she saw me, I thought she would cry. I wanted to cry too. When I reached her, I hugged her so hard and for so long that I know people must have wondered who died.
There were no words needed during our gas station embrace.
The relief we felt after the previous day’s midterm election, combined with knowing we had won so many important races across the state while losing all the ones in our own backyard, creates a special kind of bond. We live in one of the reddest parts of a “red” state.
But here’s the thing we both kept talking about…the progress we have made in the last decade. We haven’t won in our district in well over 30 years, but the last decade has proven a Democratic shift in nearly every election we have contested.
And you know that’s my passion — contesting every race. Even the rural ones, because we can’t win if we don’t run. So we run in places we can’t win until we do win.
Speaking on rural races at a DNC event in DC a few weeks back…
I bet you heard about what happened across the country Tuesday night in Georgia and Iowa and Kansas and Texas and South Carolina…you know, all the red states that seemed impervious to change and democracy.
But you may have not heard about Missouri, and I am going to change that because it is a story worth telling. We are seeing the beginning of a blue state in progress. A progressive state downloading. Blue on the horizon.
And you should know that I don’t say things like that without thought. I am way too cautious to be wrong on something so big. But I knew what I was looking at in Iowa and Kansas, and I know what I am seeing in my own state.
I can see a blue wave from the cornfields.
Let me tell you why we are so hopeful and how I know we are close to a blue Missouri: Missouri Democrats just saw 16 seats flip red to blue. We beat another abortion ban. We beat another gerrymandered map. We forced Missouri politicians to follow the will of the people with a constitutional amendment.
In Missouri, we have been rejecting the Republican agenda for years through ballot initiatives, but still voting for Republican candidates. This cycle, that changed. We won races we weren’t supposed to win. Races in red districts.
And, for the first time in Blue Missouri history, our organization funded four Missouri candidates who flipped red seats blue. That means that four candidates, who each raised less than $8000, were supported by Blue Missouri grassroots donors.
Yes, you read that right…we flipped seats in Missouri with very small investments.
Talk about the cheap seats.
And here is where I am going to get a little salty. When I speak about Blue Missouri, folks will tell me that my organization sounds like a lot of other grassroots organizations raising money for candidates across the country.
And while I am very excited to see other orgs supporting down-ballot candidates, we need as many as we can get, Blue Missouri is not like any that I know, and here is the reason: we support the races that are supposed to lose. We support the candidates that most other organizations will not support because their races are not viewed as “winnable” or “flippable.”
Our starting question is different. We don’t start with, “Who is likely to win?” We start with, “Who is being left behind?”
And that’s why Blue Missouri is special and why our work is so difficult. We do what others are not willing to do.
I regularly ask donors to give to candidates who have little chance of winning in their first cycle. Blue Missouri funds candidates who have not managed to raise much money. We fund the folks with the least first.
We call it the bathtub method. You fill a bathtub by starting at the bottom.
Much the same, we raise the funding floor for candidates in the entire state by making sure not even one candidate is left out. We know the reddest and most rural candidates will likely have the hardest time fundraising, so we do it for them.
We think it is political malpractice to have a first-time, red-state, red-district candidate spend time on the phone desperately looking for donors when they could be knocking on doors and calling voters in districts who haven’t had a Democrat run in decades. They could be walking in a parade or attending a debate or forum. They could be reaching voters.
Another benefit to funding for these red races is that the word is out and candidates are more likely to run if they can count on money from Blue Missouri donors. They are more likely to stick their neck out in a rural space knowing there is money coming in.
And these down-ballot candidates are knocking doors in red congressional districts. The congressional candidates reap the benefits of Blue Missouri donors even though they themselves don’t receive funding.
It’s like a massive puzzle that we are finally putting together. We have had missing pieces for decades. It’s much easier to run for State Senate or Congress when you have several other candidates down-ballot doing their part. And while a legislative seat may not flip in a cycle, all those votes are counted at the top of the ticket.
A win-win.
My friend Michele Hornish co-founded Blue Missouri. I’ve worked with her for three years, and I hear her voice when I talk about underfunded and uncontested races. She started what I can’t get enough of…funding difficult races because we believe in the candidates and in our state.
I also hear the voice of Stacey Abrams and the roadmap she created to take back Georgia. I think of Beto and what he was able to do in Texas.
And guess what…it worked. They all planted something years ago that finally bore fruit last Tuesday. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They walked so we could run. They ran so we could derail fascism.
We did it.
Jess
One of the first resignations after the midterm elections was that of Harmeet Dhillon. She was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department. She not only oversaw the major civil rights laws, she also was responsible for those rights that protected students and staff in schools. Trump was trying to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, and wrestling queen Secretary Linda McMahon sent the Department’s Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department, to be overseen by Harmeet Dhillon.
Dhillon opposes most if not all civil rights laws, as they have been written and interpreted by legislators, judges, juries, lawyers, and citizens. Most people think that civil rights laws are intended to rectify past injustice or to safeguard those whose opportunities have been curtailed by state action or institutions. Dhillon prefers to ignore the history of civil rights in this country and to enforce strict equality, with no preferential treatment for anyone.
Her attention has been laser-focused on voter fraud and elections, supporting Trump’s strong belief that elections are rigged, that undocumented people are casting ballots, and that her office must pursue these crimes.
Jan Resseger, indefatigable champion of the underdog, explains how Dhillon used her position to undermine civil rights laws.
She writes:
Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice, resigned on November 5.
President Trump has demanded that Education Secretary Linda McMahon shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and McMahon has distributed much of the work to other departments through “interagency agreements.” In the past six months, after the U.S. Department of Education began collaborating with the Justice Department through an interagency agreement, Harmeet Dhillon had undertaken leadership of much of the work of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
The NY Times‘ Glenn Thrush, Michael Bender, and Alan Feuer describe Dhillon’s resignation this week and her aggressive and twisted approach to civil rights enforcement:
“Harmeet Dhillon, the chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, resigned on Thursday after conflicts with department leaders, including disagreements over legal strategy in the midterm elections… Ms. Dhillon, whose tenure was defined by a successful pressure campaign against universities and unsuccessful efforts to obtain voting data from states had been telling friends for weeks that she planned to step down… In less than two years on the job, Ms. Dhillon repurposed a unit created to address Jim Crow injustices into a battering ram against the left, setting aside its longtime mission of fighting discrimination against Black people to battle campus antisemitism and diversity initiatives… Ms. Dhillon’s hard-line approach, laid out in a series of April 2025 memos declaring her intention to pursue a conservative culture war agenda, prompted the departure of hundreds of career officials in the unit. That left her short-handed to pursue many of her objectives, including the deployment of 1,000 election monitors around the country on Election Day….”
There is no indication that Dhillion’s resignation indicates any change in the civil rights strategy of the Trump administration. Neither does Dhillon’s resignation appear to have been caused by the Democrats’ midterm rout. While her resignation was not announced until November 5, Dhillon had submitted a letter of resignation three weeks prior to last Tuesday’s election, and there is widespread agreement that resigning was her own choice, and not the President’s. In August, the NY Times’ Glenn Thrush and Michael Bender reported: “She has told people in her orbit she may quit if she is not promoted to deputy attorney general, a post vacated by Todd Blanche when he rose to be attorney general—and would only stay if she respects the alternative pick.”
Coverage of Harmeet Dhillon’s policies at the Department of Justice’s civil rights division has addressed a number of urgently important issues. The Washington Post‘s Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck track Dhillon’s failure to investigate the ICE practices that included the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. And Democracy Docket‘s Matt Cohen and Yunior Rivas explore the federal investigations and lawsuits that DOJ filed under her leadership to challenge voter registration lists and interfere with the November mid-term election.
However, at the heart of Dhillon’s agenda was the twisted destruction of the federal government’s attempt to protect the educational mission of the Civil Rights Movement, which had sought to end racial segregation in the public schools and address the nation’s appalling educational inequality.
Dhillon’s primary agenda for K-12 public schools was to end the protection of diversity, equity and inclusion for groups of students who had attended segregated schools and whose rights had been violated historically. Dhillon’s agenda for the nation’s colleges and universities similarly sought to impose the Trump administration’s expansive interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a case Dhillon and her colleagues have interpreted as not only banning affirmative action, but also as terminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and initiatives across K-12 public schools and higher education.
“Dhillon dramatically transformed the civil rights division in a little over a year and a half,” writes The Guardian’s Sam Levine, “reorienting its mission away from the work it had traditionally done protecting the civil rights of minorities. Under her leadership, the department dropped many cases alleging discrimination against racial minorities in voting, housing, employment and education. Scores of career lawyers also left the division under her leadership, leading to an exodus of expertise of civil rights enforcement.”
In early October, Glenn Thrush elaboratedon the disruptive transformation of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division after Dhillon’s appointment: Dhillon hired “130 lawyers who have recently joined the Justice Department’s short-staffed civil rights division as the Trump administration has struggled to fill the depleted ranks of a unit that was once a magnet for legal talent. Since early 2025, upward of 300 nonpolitical career employees, representing decades of experience, have left the division after its leader, Harmeet Dhillon, repurposed it to pursue President Trump’s agenda. As a consequence, the division has opened its doors to recruits, many of them conservatives, some with education and work histories that might have disqualified them from being hired in the past… Some have left a trail of hyperpartisan, conspiratorial and, in some instances, bizarre statements….”
Harmeet Dhillon’s Impact on Higher Education
Dhillon filed lawsuits threatening federal research grants to universities that she alleged were promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” As reported by Thrush, Bender and Feuer, “In higher education, she mounted repeated challenges to admissions practices and campus speech policies, opening high-profile investigations and lawsuits against elite institutions. She sued Harvard twice, once over accusations of antisemitism and another over claims that the school’s admissions policies discriminated against white and Asian people (she lost both times). She also spoke out in support of parent rights groups, fueling the administration’s push to pare back protections for transgender students… In June 2025, Ms. Dhillon and her team pushed James E. Ryan, the president of the University of Virginia, into early retirement over his reluctance to adopt Mr. Trump’s anti-diversity policies and narrow view of anti-Semitism.” (parenthetical phrase in the original)
Last summer, Bender and Thrush exposed Dhillon‘s proactive strategy for pursuing her agenda: “After being confirmed to lead the civil rights division, Ms. Dhillon perused the U.S. News & World Report rankings of top undergraduate, law school and medical school programs, dispatching demands for admissions data, including applicants’ gender, race and test scores. She concluded that medical schools at U.C.L.A. and Yale were discriminating against white and Asian applicants. (Each school expressed confidence in its admissions practices.) At least 15 other top medical schools are under investigation… Over the past year, she has investigated the University of California system, Arizona State University, George Mason, the City University of New York, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas… Mrs. Dhillon has targeted Harvard University as a prominent part of her battle against liberal academia, but it has the resources and the will to fight back.” (parenthetical phrase in the original)
Harmeet Dhillon’s Impact on K-12 Public Education
Last July, after Education Secretary Linda McMahon transferred some of the responsibility for civil rights enforcement in public schools from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to be housed through an interagency agreement at the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, Education Week’s Alyson Klein explored what the new arrangement would mean:
“Former employees of both agencies… point to big structural differences between the two offices. OCR must consider every complaint it receives and generally seeks an administrative—rather than a legal—resolution whereas the Justice Department more commonly pursues litigation, and does so selectively… What’s more, the shift may give the Trump administration more potent legal tools to investigate and litigate against schools and districts that run afoul of its policies on DEI and transgender students. Earlier this summer, shortly after the transfer was announced, Harmeet Dhillon… told conservative radio host Glenn Beck that her office would pursue legal action to prevent students from having ‘illegal gender ideology… forced down their throats’ without parental permission… In her interview with Beck, Dhillon… also lambasted laws in states like California that she contends give preference in competitions for public contracts to historically disadvantaged groups, such as racial minorities. That’s a sign her agency may use its authority to pursue legal cases against districts it believes allow for racial preferences that the Trump administration contends are illegal.”
Finally, Dhillon’s division took an historic step away from civil rights enforcement in the nation’s public schools by terminating a mass of civil rights consent decrees. The NY Times‘ Bender reported: “The Justice Department… ended its watchdog role in more than 50 cases enforcing racial desegregation in schools, mostly in the Deep South, a significant milestone in the Trump administration’s bid to overhaul civil rights enforcement in America. Justice Department records showed that 57 desegregation orders have been dismissed since the start of President Trump’s second term, although it could not be verified late Thursday that a judge had ruled in each one. Nearly 80 percent of the cases were in five Southern states—Alabama with five, Georgia with 15, Louisiana with 11, Mississippi with 13, and South Carolina with one… The Justice Department suggested that the desegregation cases were relics of the nation’s past that continued to impose unnecessary financial burdens on local governments. ‘In some cases, school districts have been under federal control for more than 60 years,’ Ms. Dhillon said in a statement. Dhillon continued: ‘In this administration, we are ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts because the effort does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today.’ ”
Bender describes the response of groups who work for the protection of civil rights: “Groups including the N.A.A.C.P. have said that desegregation orders do more than change the racial makeup of classrooms by mandating equal funding, access to high-quality facilities and fair representation in advanced placement programs.”
Harmeet Dhillon’s Impact on Education in America
More than anyone in Donald Trump’s second administration, Harmeet Dhillon has represented the threat to a decades-long effort to repair the educational injustices of slavery and Jim Crow.
In his newest book, Dangerous Learning, constitutional law professor Derek W. Black summarizes what civil rights advocates have worked to achieve during the lifetimes of most of us who are reading this post today: “Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny fundamentally altered the way society thinks about education, not just of Black children but of all children. Laws prohibiting discrimination against students based on sex, language status, ethnicity, alienage, disability, poverty, and homelessness all grew out of the foundation Brown laid. For the past half century, the federal legal apparatus as well as several state regimes have aimed to deliver equal educational opportunity.” (Dangerous Learning, p. 275)
Harmeet Dhillon has most prominently represented the Trump administration’s attack on that legacy. Dhillon has now left the administration, but there are others who will continue twisting the meaning of our nation’s civil rights struggle and attempting to undo the progress we have made. Protecting all children’s rights in the nation’s public schools, and protecting K-12 public schools and the nation’s colleges and universities from the imposition of a narrow and distorted ideology will continue to require public vigilance and advocacy.
I mistakenly posted the opening of a piece I am writing about the return of measles. I intended to schedule it for tomorrow or the next day.
It is unfinished. Forget about it. Or, as we say in Brooklyn, “fuhgeddaboutit.”
When you see it, it will be the finished version.
~Diane
Veteran Educator Cassandra Mayes ran for the state legislature in Arkansas with no expectations about winning. As a Black woman in an overwhelmingly white district and as a Democrat in a solidly Republican district, she knew she was in an uphill race. She ran because she was compelled to give up her job due to budget cuts after the introduction of charters and then vouchers. She ran because she wants all schools–public, private, and home schools–to meet the same accountability standards. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was Trump’s press secretary in his first term, introduced the voucher program called “Arkansas LEARNS.” The story appeared in the Arkansas Times.
Mayes has had a distinguished career of nearly 30 years as a teacher of students with disabilities and an administrator of state programs.
The story begins:
Cassandra Mayes, a longtime educator and political newcomer, made history Tuesday as the first Black woman and first Democrat elected to represent House District 71, which includes Maumelle and surrounding communities.
Mayes says she was inspired to run after Arkansas LEARNS led to cuts in her contract as a district-level administrator for the Little Rock School District, forcing her to leave a career she loved to care for her ailing mother. Now she’s headed to the Capitol with plans to challenge LEARNS, starting with greater accountability for private schools receiving public money through vouchers.
Mayes faced an uphill battle in the Republican-held district, although her opponent, Stephen Bright, was dogged by allegations of domestic and child abuse that likely cost him the race.
In an interview with the Arkansas Times, Mayes describes how she refused to let the scandals surrounding her opponent derail her campaign, and how she plans to challenge Arkansas LEARNS in a newly emboldened Democratic minority.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mayes: Thank you so much. I’m still trying to process everything.
Mayes: I had been at the polls until about 7 o’clock, and I came home and got dressed, and I was going to kind of take my time before I went down to Mosaic Templars after the polls closed, and one of my team members had called me and said, “Cassandra, where are you?” I could tell in his voice that he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. I promised myself I would not check my phone or TV. And when I got to Mosaic Templars and was walking towards the war room, it was very quiet, and it concerned me. When I walked in, they said, “Cassandra, you did it.” I lost it. I cried. I knew we had a chance to flip the seat, but I just wasn’t sure because it had never been done before out here in Maumelle.
I lost it. I cried. I knew we had a chance to flip the seat, but I just wasn’t sure because it had never been done before out here in Maumelle. Cassandra Mayes
Mayes: I had personal experiences that brought me to this point. I did not grow up in a political family. Politics was close, but it wasn’t close enough for me to even have a desire. I saw it from afar, but what happened at the state level brought those experiences to me. One impacted my career that I worked very hard for and absolutely loved, and the other impacted the person that I loved the most, other than my child, and that was my mother. And those two issues collided at the same time. When my job was in jeopardy because of Arkansas LEARNS, and my mother entered a healthcare system that was not fair to her because of her pension as a retired educator, I knew that I could either talk about it and be angry or be a part of the solution.
Mayes: Yes, so when Arkansas LEARNS hit my employer [Little Rock School District], we were experiencing a decline in student enrollment prior to it hitting, and so when it hit, we had parents that were leaving the district, going to private charter-schools, and so the Education Freedom Accounts, the vouchers, basically were being utilized more. When you’re losing students, that impacts staffing and even facilities. So, my contract was substantially cut, going from a 12-month to a 10-and-a-half month employee, and the money loss basically equated to the money I was using to pay someone to stay home with my mother while I worked.
I had to make a financial decision for my family to leave a career that I absolutely loved, but to take care of someone I loved more. And it’s something that I should not have had to do. I should have been able to continue to work, but also have someone that I trusted to stay with my mom. But I couldn’t afford it, and she didn’t qualify for support.
Mayes: The first thing we need to do is have a courageous conversation of what’s going on statewide. In education, you’re taught in college that decisions you make regarding curriculum, even budgetary decisions at the school level, are data-driven, and under Arkansas LEARNS, we do not have data to support whether our schools and students are making progress because the assessment that is used is an assessment that was created for Arkansas and Arkansas only.
Under LEARNS, people are asking the question: People are utilizing the vouchers for school choice, but are the students performing at a rate that supports the need to continue the voucher program? Because parents using school choice make those decisions allegedly on academic progress and lack thereof, and under LEARNS, we have no system in place that shows us where a third grader is performing in a public school, a charter school, a private school or home school. At this point, we have no data to show how kids are performing across all of those educational options, and that is something that we must change. I support any entity that receives public funds should be held to the same standard as a public school.
Mayes: We did pick up some seats we were not expecting to pick up, so that means we were able to break the [Republican] supermajority in our legislature. What that tells us is that there is a level of synergy across the state, where we have been challenged as newly-elected officials. It also told the Republicans that people are not happy, and that change has to take place, and it’s telling all of us that we’re going to have to come together and have some conversations, and we’re going to have to make decisions outside of our personal opinions and focus on the people of this state.
Last night told all of us a clear story that change was necessary. Change is here, and we’ve got to deal with it. And in order for us to change policies in place that will make people have a better quality of life, lower the cost of living, all of us are going to have to work together to come up with solutions.
Mayes: I’m humbled and feel blessed to have been entrusted with this position in an area that is around 69% white, and the African-American population makes up less than 20%. And to be the first, I realize that there is probably a level of expectation that surpasses those that have been before me. But I’m ready to take on the challenge.
Mayes: From a campaign perspective, we kept campaigning. It never really factored to me that I needed to do anything different, or I needed go in a different direction. I knew that people were counting on me to continue to run a campaign of integrity, a campaign of facts and truth, and that was my goal from Day One, and that’s what I continued to do. There were moments where I did receive messages that I felt were inappropriate and unnecessary, but I understand the climate that we’re in. People may not have understood or were angry about the outcome, but I knew that people were counting on me.
Mayes: I am going to have a small intimate gathering for my volunteers, who are really the real winners in this particular situation. They took a chance on me. They worked tirelessly. They deserve all of the praise. It’s a small group, but we’re small and mighty, and that’s how I want to celebrate. I want them to know how much they mean to me and how much they mean to this district. Because if it were not for them, we wouldn’t be here. This campaign is so much bigger than me, because now there are people that have felt as if they had had no voice that now have a voice at the table.
So, come January, I have a lot of work to do, but I’m ready to support my colleagues and to educate others about what’s really going on in the schools, how teachers are really feeling, and how students are really performing. I’m excited about the opportunity.
The Governor-Elect of Texas, Gina Hinojosa, has committed to rebuilding the state’s public schools. Integral to that promise is understanding how to fund the public schools so they can provide equal opportunity to all children.
Bruce Baker is one of the nation’s leading experts on school finance. He offers advice here.
Full report: Digging Out: Restoring Equal Educational Opportunity in Texas (PDF)
Dear Governor-elect Hinojosa,
Congratulations. You take office in January with an opportunity no Texas governor has had in a long time: the chance to start digging the state’s public schools out of a hole Texas has spent the better part of two decades digging.
I’ve been working on Texas school finance since 2004, first alongside the state’s own analysts on the Texas School Finance Project, and later as an expert witness in the 2012 school finance trial before Judge John Dietz. I’ve just completed a new report, Digging Out: Restoring Equal Educational Opportunity in Texas (PDF linked below), that pulls together what the data show today. I’ll summarize the main points here.
It’s easy to forget, but Texas was once ahead of most of the country on school funding. After Edgewood v. Kirby in 1989, and the “Robin Hood” equalization that followed in 1993, Texas ranked 6th in the nation in school funding effort, measured as spending relative to personal income. Its state and local revenue was progressive, meaning higher-poverty districts got more per pupil. And by 2000, Texas students outscored the national average in NAEP math.
Since the mid-2000s, the state has steadily backed away:
The map tells the story. In 2009, 73% of Texas students attended districts spending below the cost of national-average outcomes. By 2024, 98% did.
Texas school district spending as a share of the cost of national-average outcomes, 2009–2024. In 2009, 73% of students attended districts spending below cost; by 2024, 98% did. Source: NECM, 2026 data runs.
The children most affected are overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic. In 2024, 93% of children in majority Black and Hispanic districts attended districts that were both funded below cost and performing below the national average, compared with 45% of children elsewhere (87% versus 33% averaged over 2009–2024). Houston ISD spends about 46% of its estimated cost. Dallas spends 43%. Edgewood ISD, the district whose name is on the 1989 decision, spends 61%, while Alamo Heights, a few miles away, spends 114% of its cost.
Funding gaps (horizontal) and outcome gaps (vertical), Texas districts, 2009–2024. Blue = majority Black or Hispanic districts; bubble size = enrollment. Source: NECM, 2026 data runs; SEDA.
And outcomes have followed the money. Texas 8th graders went from 7.5 points above the national average in NAEP math in 2011, the year of the $5.4 billion cut, to 3 points below in 2024.
The research on this is no longer seriously in dispute. Increases in school funding improve student outcomes, and cuts make them worse. That holds whether the money goes to operations or facilities, and whether it comes from legislatures, courts, or local voters. And additional dollars have the biggest effect where states have historically underinvested and where child poverty is highest. That describes much of Texas.
The state launched its Education Freedom Accounts this year at $1 billion. About 43% of selected students came from public schools; most of the money is going to families who were already in private school or homeschooling. The Comptroller has already asked for roughly $2 billion for the next biennium, and the Legislative Budget Board projected costs of $4.8 billion by 2030.
By comparison, closing the gap between what Texas districts spend and what it would cost to reach just national-average outcomes runs on the order of $45 billion a year. The voucher program is pegged to average state and local funding, which this analysis finds falls below cost in nearly every district. The state shouldn’t be expanding a private alternative at a funding level it hasn’t shown is adequate for its public schools.
As a legislator, you filed HB 1246 in 2021 and HB 31 in 2023 to fund Texas schools on enrollment rather than average daily attendance. That proposal is right, and the evidence behind it goes back more than a decade. In my 2012 expert report in the school finance trial, I showed that attendance as a share of enrollment fell steadily from the lowest- to the highest-poverty fifth of Texas districts in every year from 2006 to 2011. Because Texas uses attendance both for the base count and for the students who generate need weights, that gap compounds through the whole formula. Sean Corcoran and I made the same point nationally that year in The Stealth Inequities of School Funding: funding on attendance works as an “unpoverty weight,” quietly moving money away from the districts that serve the most children in poverty.
Commissioner Morath put the cost of the switch at about $6 billion per biennium. That is real money, but it is a fraction of the gap documented here, and it would go to exactly the districts furthest below cost. It is also the one fix that does not need to wait for a new cost study.
Fixing this takes three steps, and the first can start right away.
In Morath (2016), the Texas Supreme Court called the system “Byzantine,” “undeniably imperfect, with immense room for improvement,” and left it to the Legislature to fix. The Legislature has acted twice since then, in 2019 and 2025, and neither time changed the basic pattern: the districts with the greatest needs remain the furthest from adequate funding.
Texas led once. It can lead again.
Respectfully,
Bruce D. Baker
University of Miami
Digging Out: Restoring Equal Educational Opportunity in Texas (Baker, November 2026)Download
Everyone knows that Texas turned blue in Election Day, but did you know that Arizona turned blue? Governor Katie Hobbs was re-elected Governor. And remarkably, Democrats won a majority of both houses of the Legislature!
For years, the rightwing Governor and likeminded Legislature expanded vouchers, despite the fact that the public endorsed a referendum against vouchers in 2019. The Koch brothers’ machine encouraged the Republican governor and Legislature to pursue privatization of the schools. There was no stopping the Republicans’ determination to defund public schools and to send public money to private schools, home schools, religious schools, with minimal accountability for how that money was spent.
Save Our Schools Arizona reported the details about the Democratic sweep in their state.
Save Our Schools Arizona reported:
We’ve always known this was possible. Alongside YOU – our volunteers, supporters, and coalition partners – we put in the work day after day for 10 years to achieve this goal. Despite defeat (after defeat after defeat), we all dusted ourselves off time and time again to protect the right of all Arizona students to have accessible, high quality, well resourced, inclusive public schools. Some days, it felt impossible to keep going – but we collectively picked each other up and kept going with a dream in our hearts that better was possible. This week, that dream was realized. Thank you.
👏 Now, we have a state legislature that will invest and prioritize children, educators, families, and public schools and put major ESA reforms – like those in the Protect Education Act – into law. Public education advocates now hold a 20-10 supermajority in the State Senate, and a robust 37-23 majority in the State House. It’s time to GET THINGS DONE FOR KIDS 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
👏 Voters statewide also rejected Prop 320 – a measure that would have imposed an arbitrary and impossible mandate of 60% “direct classroom spending,” with stiff penalties for districts who couldn’t meet the mark. Prop. 320 would have had disastrous impacts on public school budgets for special education, nurses, counselors, food services, transportation, literacy coaches, and so much more. We are so grateful to our coalition partners across the state who worked to defeat this devastating measure – teamwork made the dream work, and we are so grateful AZ voters saw through this deceptive ballot measure put on the ballot by anti-public school Goldwater Institute and pushed by former Gov. Ducey and newly rejected state Rep. Matt Gress.
👏 Voters elected lifelong educator Dr. Teresa Leyba Ruiz as Superintendent of Public Instruction – beating MAGA acolyte Kimberly Yee and replacing Supt. Tom Horne. Dr. Ruiz will be a champion for public school students and educators, and will work to stop the off-the-rails abuse of the ESA voucher program! We also hear some of her immediate priorities are to take down Horne’s “teacher snitch” line and take PragerU off the ADE website 👏👏👏 It’s a new day for public education!
👏 Arizona also voters elected pro-public education champions up and down the ballot, from Gov. Hobbs, Attorney General Mayes, Sec. of State Fontes, and newly elected Treasurer Nick Mansour, who has pledged to increase transparency of ESA voucher funds to help eliminate wasteful spending. Most of our #PublicSchoolProud school board candidates sailed to victory, and MAGA’s presence is greatly diminished across AZ school boards!
👏 Finally, voters passed ~75% local school funding measures (bonds and overrides) statewide – 37 out of 50 measures – though ballots are still being counted and could change the final number. We are crossing our fingers and toes for districts that are still awaiting final news, as the success of these measures means so very much for students, educators, and families 🤞
We are deeply disheartened by the passage of Prop. 318 😡which attacks trans youth, setting up deeply unfair and discriminatory rules for kids and sports teams. The measure seeks to convert teachers into the gender police and lays the ground for endless lawsuits against families and schools. At SOSAZ, we work to protect all children, and the state of AZ has failed some of our most precious children this week.
Public Education WINS: In AZ and across the country, candidates who boldly championed public education WON. They won BIG and in places they were told they couldn’t win. In Texas, James Talarico was elected Senator and Gina Hinojosa was elected governor – and both ran on an unabashedly pro-public education, anti-voucher platform. As Gov-elect Hinojosa said in her acceptance speech, “The days of treating our public schools like they’re for sale are over” 🔥🔥🔥
In Arizona, deep-pocketed privatizers have tried to discredit, defund, and dismantle our public schools – but the voters are on to them, and gone are the Republican lawmakers and candidates who went along with these attacks on our children and communities. There are many lessons to be learned there, but the primary one is this: Arizonans LOVE our public schools. They want teachers and staff to be paid their worth. They want kids to have accessible, high quality schools in their neighborhoods. And no amount of voucher lobby money or shady politics is going to reverse that. Let’s goooooooooooooooooooo, Arizona!!!
WE DID IT!!! Your contributions propelled us to victory, funding our community organizers, flyers, social media graphics and ads, ballot guides, and extensive outreach to voters.
Please fuel our grassroots work with a celebratory donation 👉
We are about to go into one of the busiest (and most productive!) seasons in our history, as we work with this newly formed pro-public education legislature and wide K-12 coalitions to pass meaningful legislation to benefit our kids, our educators, our schools, and the future of our state.
Sound easy? Not so fast…
Your support over the years has allowed us to educate the public on the out-of-control $1 billion ESA voucher program and its devastating impacts on public schools to the forefront of public discourse in Arizona — where it belongs. Vouchers are not only unaccountable, but are designed to wreak havoc on and ultimately shut down public education.
Now that we’ve helped to change the balance of power, it’s time to start leading with real policy, grassroots lobbying, and organizing communities to ensure every impacted voice is represented.
Our newsletters don’t write themselves! Support our work by becoming a paid subscriber to Save Our Schools Arizona’s Substack. A monthly or annual donation of any amount helps to keep the lights on at the Weekly Education Report so we can provide you with the latest news in education week after week.
Don’t forget to join us on social media. Pick your favorite(s) and join us for fun, engaging content! This is where we post important updates, key news articles, and informative graphics and videos you can’t get anywhere else.
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District 4 in Tennessee was held by Republican Scott DesJarlais for sixteen years. He prided himself on being a staunch conservative, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
Desjarlais was first elected to Congress in 2010 and had been considered unbeatable. His district was considered a safe Republican seat.
In 2024, he was challenged by Democrat Victoria Broderick, and he easily beat her, by a margin of 70%-26%.
Victoria Broderick says that when she heard he was running unopposed in 2026, she had to run against him again, despite the shellacking of 2024.
She said:
FLASHBACK: “DesJarlais was going to run unopposed, I said over my dead body — he paid for 3 abortions for his wife and mistresses… you do you, but don’t take our rights away.”
Victoria Broderick appears to have won by 280 votes. Incredible. #TN4
You can see her statement on Twitter, posted by The Tennessee Holler.
https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1807867456540582184/video/1
According to DesJarlais’ Wikipedia profile, he has admitted to multiple affairs and multiple abortions.
A very satisfying election victory.
Heather Cox Richardson analyzes Trump’s reactions to the Democratic uprising against his administration and his inhumane policies. As she notes, Trump replaced his chief of staff Susie Wiles with her deputy Stephen Miller. Miller is the most vicious of Trump’s inner circle. He has consistently pushed 3,000 deportations per day, with the hope of reaching one million deportations yearly. His goal is an all-white America, which is ridiculous because we are a multiethnic, multiracial society. He is mean.
Richardson wrote:
On Tuesday, Americans rejected the Trump administration. It turns out most people hated the idea of a strongman who ignored the Constitution, undermined democracy, and tried to rewrite America’s history in order to impose a white, Christian nationalist regime that enriched him and his cronies at the expense of everyone else.
Voters made their position very clear. A majority of more than 12 million demanded an end to corruption, an end to Trump’s war on Iran, an end to costly tariffs, and an end to the masked agents kidnapping Black and Brown people off the streets.
By a margin of more than 13%, they voted for a country based on the rule of law in which everyone is held accountable for their actions and no one can break the law with impunity. They voted for the system of checks and balances established by the Framers of the Constitution. They voted for policies that supported the American people, making it possible for them to afford food and housing and healthcare rather than continuing to funnel money to billionaires.
They voted for the multicultural country Trump and his loyalists mocked. They elected Democratic Black candidates Keisha Lance Bottoms to govern Georgia, David Crowley to govern Wisconsin, Aaron Ford to govern Nevada, and Stacey Plaskett to govern the U.S. Virgin Islands. They elected Byron Donalds, a Black Republican, to govern Florida.
Voters elected Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to be the nation’s first Muslim senator, and they reelected Representative Ilhan Omar, whom Trump has made a key target of his attacks, with an astonishing 76.5% of her district’s vote.
As Valerie Gonzalez, Mike Catalini, and Jonathan J. Cooper of the Associated Press reported, Hispanic voters shifted hard away from the Republican Party and swung back toward the Democrats in 2026, with 7 out of 10 Hispanic voters in Texas backing Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. In a rejection of Trump’s attacks on immigrants, for the first time since 2008, Democrats won every House district that touches the U.S.-Mexico border, and voters have sent fourteen new Hispanic Democrats to Congress.
Black voters, especially in the American South, turned out in unusually high numbers, and they voted for Democrats at higher rates than they did in 2024. Emily Cochrane of the New York Times reported that about 80% of Black votes in congressional races across the country were for Democratic candidates.
The message was unmistakable.
Since his 2024 reelection, Trump and his allies have repeatedly insisted that his victory of about 2.3 million voters over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, earning him less than 50% of the vote, was a “mandate.” Compared to the margin of more than 12 million voters delivered on Tuesday, it was a fizzle. The Economist noted that Tuesday’s Democratic victory was “the biggest congressional landslide in 50 years.” Recognizing the direction of the tide, since the election, panicked Republicans have called for regrouping, ending the war on Iran, and addressing affordability.
Trump initially appeared dazed by the rebuke, but today he woke up and threw their rejection of his agenda back in Americans’ teeth.
Ousting his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Trump replaced her with the architect of some of his administration’s most extreme policies: Stephen Miller.
Miller is a fervent white nationalist who appears to believe in the racist “great replacement theory,” the idea that Black and Brown immigrants to Europe and the United States are destroying “Western culture.”
Miller’s elevation to chief of staff doesn’t necessarily change much; he already was a powerful force in the White House. Miller drove the “Muslim ban” in Trump’s first term and, in his second, the administration’s arrest, incarceration, and deportation plans for undocumented immigrants. His push for masked agents to arrest 3,000 people a day led to the murders of U.S. citizens Renee Goode and Alex Pretti, as well as the shooting deaths of immigrants and their mistreatment and deaths in concentration camps.
Miller has been a key proponent of Trump’s seizing power through emergency declarations that he uses to ignore the law. Frustrated by opposition to his plan to hurt Black and Brown people, Miller pushed for Trump to crush the opposition by invoking the Insurrection Act.
And Miller was central to the administration’s undermining of disability rights. Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News reported that after Trump complained about seeing homeless encampments in Washington, D.C., Miller argued for a plan to make it easier to round up mentally ill homeless people and institutionalize them. Making that happen required abandoning enforcement of the 1999 Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. L.C., which established that disabled Americans have a right to live in their communities rather than being forced into institutions.
The Department of Justice went along with Miller’s plan and issued a memo saying that it would no longer enforce Olmstead. While the initial targets were unhoused people, Hixenbaugh notes, the administration quickly backed away from at least five disability rights cases designed to keep physically or mentally disabled children and adults out of institutions. Hixenbaugh points out that the administration’s refusal to enforce Olmstead is sending a message to the states that, with the dramatic cuts to Medicaid in the Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” they should “feel free to cut services that help disabled people remain at home,” forcing them into institutions.
As Phillips S. O’Brien wrote in Phillip’s Newsletter, Miller also supports Russia’s version of its war on Ukraine and has taken a strong and public stand against the embattled U.S. ally. O’Brien notes that Trump’s elevation of Miller now illustrates the president’s determination to get whatever he can for Russia’s president Vladimir Putin before the new Congress starts investigations and puts up roadblocks.
So, rather than moderating his behavior after voters’ dramatic rebuke, Trump is demonstrating by elevating Miller that he is hardening his position. He is surrounding himself with the most extreme of his advisors: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom he has supported in the face of calls for his impeachment; Natalie Harp, the smiling aide who appears glued to his side; and Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a key author of Project 2025, who Trump boasted before the election would soon “be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion.” He noted: “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ?”
Trump’s elevation of Miller was a deliberate declaration that he doesn’t care what the American people want. Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), whom the administration has targeted because of her attempt to conduct oversight of a detention facility, was clear: “Stephen Miller is a white supremacist,” she said in a statement. “By promoting the person responsible for ICE detaining our neighbors and killing people in the streets, Donald Trump is doubling down on the cruelty and corruption that have defined his administration. The president is panicked after losing power in Congress and this is a signal about what he will prioritize in the final stretch of his presidency: grievance and cruelty.”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) posted: “Donald Trump learned nothing from his historic defeat. Stephen Miller is the architect of the most barbaric, inhumane policies of this administration. Trump couldn’t have made a worse choice. Our Democratic majorities will fight him every step of the way.”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries posted: “Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands. His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today.”
But Trump’s embrace of Miller was not aimed at Democrats alone. It is a shot across the bow of Republicans who might want to jump ship. When Meredith Lee Hill of Politico told one House Republican that Trump had tapped Miller to be his chief of staff, the lawmaker replied: “Please tell me you’re lying to me right now, just to get a reaction.”
Trump is making it clear to Republicans that he intends to force the party to stay behind an even more extreme weapon of MAGA than the one voters rejected Tuesday, incinerating their hopes for 2028. Alex Isenstadt of Axios reported today that Trump has told advisors that he intends to keep raising money so he can continue to wield power over Republican candidates in 2028.
And in a sign that MAGA leaders are determined to keep Republicans in line, Philip Wegmann of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the White House sent a memo to more than 3,000 Republican-oriented groups, warning them: “As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.”
It all feels very desperate.
Tonight Trump appeared in a campaign hat at a NASA event at which he rambled from topic to topic, slurring his words and sounding tired. He said he had declared all of space “open for American settlement, American civilization, and American freedom.” He said that “[w]ithin two years, NASA will launch the first ever nuclear powered spacecraft to Mars,” before veering off to talk about his uncle, who was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Trump promised that “before the end of my term, the United States will return American astronauts to the surface of the Moon. So exciting. And soon thereafter the United States will establish a permanent presence on lunar soil.”
To a silent audience, Trump said: “By the way, I was not on the ballot, just in case you had any questions. Because if we were on the ballot we would’ve won.”
