In a closing performance at the Olympics, Amber Glenn poured her heart into her last act. Simply magnificent!
And Alysa Liu’s gold-medal-winning ice dance was stunning.
Wow!
President Trump sends out statenff ed bts on Truth Social, his personal social media site, that are sometimes odd. Someone in the White House should fact-check them before he posts and embarrasses himself.
Over the weekend, he posted this:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!
President DJT
Trump’s tweet (or whatever it’s called on Truth Social) led to head-scratching on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Washington Post reported the response from Greenland:
Officials on the island, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, did not ask for such a ship, and Greenland’s prime minister said it will not be welcoming it, as its citizens are guaranteed free health care.
“It’s a no thank you from here,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a statement Sunday.
“President Trump’s idea of sending an American hospital ship here to Greenland has been noted. But we have a public healthcare system where treatment is free for citizens. That is a deliberate choice — and a fundamental part of our society. That is not how it works in the USA.”
Trump’s announcement came shortly after news that a member of the crew on an American submarine had a medical emergency and was airlifted by a Danish helicopter to Nuuk.
Trump’s promise to send a hospital ship to Greenland was equally bizarre because both of the Navy’s hospital ships are in dry dock undergoing repairs.
I first learned about this imaginary crisis this morning when I read Jeff Tiedrich’s hilarious post. I considered reposting it here because it was both newsworthy and hilarious, but decided against doing so because it is so scatological.
Consider the title:
batshit fuckwit vows to fix imaginary Greenland health crisis
perfectly normal stuff
folks, it is a bad thing when the president of the United States is so utterly detached from reality that when he announces a great humanitarian relief effort, no one has any fucking clue what he’s gibbering about?
And that’s just the beginning!
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Louisiana can require every public school to post the Ten Commandments. This issue has been controversial in many states. The Ten Commandments is a specifically religious statement, and there are multiple versions of it among Christians and Jews. Some religions do not recognize the Ten Commandments.
Whenever religion is introduced into schools and other public places, the same problems arise. Whose religion will be taught? What about the rights of atheist families? it’s easy to forget that there are scores of different religions in the U.S., and each complains if the government honors one religion but not another.
The Louisiana Illuminator reported:
NEW ORLEANS — A federal appellate court has cleared the way for displays of the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom, removing an order that stopped state officials from enforcing a law that requires them.
In a decision issued Friday from its full roster of 18 judges, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a June decision from a three-judge panel that determined the 2024 state law was “plainly unconstitutional” and upheld a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law. Friday’s ruling lifts that injunction and allows the state to mandate all schools display the 10 Commandments in every classroom.”
Five judges on the 5th Circuit dissented with the unsigned majority opinion that placed emphasis on not knowing exact details of what the displays would look like once placed in classrooms. Attorney General Liz Murrill has provided examples and guidance for displays to follow the law, but local school districts have authority to determine what they look like.
Without any context, appellate judges said in the opinion they were unwilling to rule based on conjecture.
“It would oblige us to hypothesize an open-ended range of possible classroom displays and then assess each under a context-sensitive standard that depends on facts not yet developed and, indeed, not yet knowable,” the opinion reads. “That exercise exceeds the judicial function. guessing.”
The ruling stops short of declaring Louisiana’s law constitutional or saying it doesn’t violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that prohibits a state-sanctioned religion.
However, in a concurring opinion, Judge James Ho, a federal court appointee of President Donald Trump in 2018, went further than the other judges in the majority.
“In sum, the Louisiana Ten Commandments law is not just constitutional — it affirms our Nation’s highest and most noble traditions,” Ho wrote.
“Don’t kill or steal shouldn’t be controversial,” she said. “My office has issued clear guidance to our public schools on how to comply with the law, and we have created multiple examples of posters demonstrating how it can be applied constitutionally. Louisiana public schools should follow the law,” said Attorney General Liz Murrill.
Murrill issued a statement in response to the 5th Circuit ruling. Benjamin Aguiñaga, the state’s solicitor general, has argued the case before the 5th Circuit.
The ACLU of Louisiana, which was among the groups representing plaintiffs in the case, is “exploring all legal pathways forward to continue the fight against this unconstitutional law,” executive director Alanah Odoms said in a statement through a spokesman.
The plaintiffs in the case, Roarke v. Brumley, are nine families who have children in public schools in five parishes — East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon. Their views range from secular to religious, including Catholic, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Jewish and other faiths. They have argued the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments the legislature adopted for the classroom displays differs from the versions they follow.
Along with the ACLU, Americans United and the Freedom from Religion Foundation represented the plaintiffs and issued a joint statement in response to the 5th Circuit decision.
“Today’s ruling is extremely disappointing and would unnecessarily force Louisiana’s public school families into a game of constitutional whack-a-mole in every school district,” the statement reads. “Longstanding judicial precedent makes clear that our clients need not submit to the very harms they are seeking to prevent before taking legal action to protect their rights. But this fight isn’t over. We will continue fighting for the religious freedom of Louisiana’s families.”
Stephen Dyer is a former legislator in Ohio who keeps track of the budgetary impact of school choice on the state’s public schools. Despite multiple voucher programs, 85% of the state’s 1,000,000 children attend public schools. Dyer’s blog is called Tenth Period.
Ohio’s State Constitution contains explicit language supporting public schools and equally explicit language barring the public funding of religious schools.
Article VI of the Ohio State Constitution says:
“The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”
Nothing ambiguous there, but Republicans in Ohio ignore or creatively distort the State Constitution.
So I came across an interesting piece of information today. Since 2021, Ohioans went from unconstitutionally subsidizing the private school tuitions of a little over 3 in 10 private school students to more than 8 in 10 today.
At an astounding pricetag of a 313 percent increase — at least — in taxpayer subsidies¹.
Yes, Ohio’s private schools have seen an enrollment increase. However, that 22,000 student increase represents barely 1 percent of the 1.9 million students enrolled in all Ohio schools this year.
And the funding has vastly outstripped the rate of unconstitutional voucher growth — resulting in a nearly 20 percent per pupil funding increase for private schools.
So get this.
State leaders have spent the last 5 years increasing unconstitutional voucher spending by $600 million, demonizing public education, putting on a full-court press to convince people to take unconstitutional vouchers and that’s netted them … barely a 1 percent increase in the private school share of Ohio’s school enrollment?
Pretty awful ROI, don’t you think?
Especially when you consider that by unconstitutionally subsidizing the private school tuitions of mostly wealthy people like Les Wexner, the state is literally funding a separate, second educational system in direct contravention of the state constitution.
And it has meant they have been unable (unwilling?) to fully pay for the state’s school funding formula for the 85 percent of students attending Ohio’s public schools. The state’s public school funding comes out of the same budget pot as its voucher money.
So the only way for voucher proponents to convince any good-faith judge or group of judges that they are not funding a second, unconstitutional and unaccountable² school system is to actually shrink the number of vouchers.
Which they’ll never do.
This fact, as much as any, helps explain state Rep. Jamie Callender’s recent attempt to bully the suing school districts into dropping the case— a threat from which he has (kinda) weaklybacked down.
For if these suing school districts continue to stand strong, Callender and his overlord, Speaker Matt Huffman — lawyers, both — know they are screwed.
Legally speaking.
Footnotes:
1. I’m only including the two EdChoice programs and the Cleveland voucher program because those are the ones at issue in the current lawsuit. These numbers are, obviously, higher if you include the autism and special needs vouchers. Also, as with every current year data analysis of vouchers, the funding numbers are estimates because we don’t have readily accessible current year dollar figures for the vouchers, just the number of students whose schools are now eligible to get them. So I multiplied last year’s per pupil amount for each of the voucher programs to reach the $861.6 million figure. It’s probably going to be more because per pupil voucher funding always increases.
2. Remember that not a penny of the $8 billion+ we’ve spent on unconstitutional private school tuition subsidies since 1996 has been audited.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today, by a vote of 6-3, to overturn Trump’s unilateral tariffs on other nations. Three Republican-appointed justices–Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett–voted with the Court’s three liberal justices.
Trump responded with fury. He believed that his appointees owed him their loyalty and their votes. He accused them of a lack of patriotism and even insinuated that they were advancing the interests of a foreign power.
He wrote on his social media site Truth Social that the decision was wrong, and he insulted those Republican justices who voted against his tariffs. He must have been especially angry at Justice Gorsuch and Justice Barret, whom he appointed.
Trump made clear that he intended to circumvent the Court’s decision by relying on other laws. As Trump often says, “Trump was right about everthing.”
He wrote:
The Supreme Court’s Ruling on TARIFFS is deeply disappointing! I am ashamed of certain Members of the Court for not having the Courage to do what is right for our Country. I would like to thank and congratulate Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for your Strength, Wisdom, and Love of our Country, which is right now very proud of you. When you read the dissenting opinions, there is no way that anyone can argue against them. Foreign Countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic, and dancing in the streets — But they won’t be dancing for long! The Democrats on the Court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote “NO” against ANYTHING that makes America Strong and Healthy Again. They, also, are a Disgrace to our Nation. Others think they’re being “politically correct,” which has happened before, far too often, with certain Members of this Court when, in fact, they’re just FOOLS and “LAPDOGS” for the RINOS and Radical Left Democrats and, not that this should have anything to do with it, very unpatriotic, and disloyal to the Constitution. It is my opinion that the Court has been swayed by Foreign Interests, and a Political Movement that is far smaller than people would think — But obnoxious, ignorant, and loud!
This was an important case to me, more as a symbol of Economic and National Security, than anything else. The Good News is that there are methods, practices, Statutes, and other Authorities, as recognized by the entire Court and Congress, that are even stronger than the IEEPA TARIFFS, available to me as President of the United States of America and, in actuality, I was very modest in my “ask” of other Countries and Businesses because I wanted to do nothing that could sway the decision that has been rendered by the Court.
I have very effectively utilized TARIFFS over the past year to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Our Stock Market has just recently broken the 50,000 mark on the DOW and, simultaneously, 7,000 on the S&P, two numbers that everybody thought, upon our Landslide Election Victory, could not be attained until the very end of my Administration — Four years! TARIFFS have, likewise, been used to end five of the eight Wars that I settled, have given us Great National Security and, together with our Strong Border, reduced Fentanyl coming into our Country by 30%, when I use them as a penalty against Countries illegally sending this poison to us. All of those TARIFFS remain, but other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the Court incorrectly rejected.
To show you how ridiculous the opinion is, the Court said that I’m not allowed to charge even $1 DOLLAR to any Country under IEEPA, I assume to protect other Countries, not the United States which they should be interested in protecting — But I am allowed to cut off any and all Trade or Business with that same Country, even imposing a Foreign Country destroying embargo, and do anything else I want to do to them — How nonsensical is that? They are saying that I have the absolute right to license, but not the right to charge a license fee. What license has ever been issued without the right to charge a fee? But now the Court has given me the unquestioned right to ban all sorts of things from coming into our Country, a much more powerful Right than many people thought we had.
Our Country is the “HOTTEST” anywhere in the World, but now, I am going in a different direction, which is even stronger than our original choice. As Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his Dissent:
“Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs issued in this case…Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232); the Trade Act of 1974 (Sections 122, 201, and 301); and the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 338).”
Thank you Justice Kavanaugh!
In actuality, while I am sure they did not mean to do so, the Supreme Court’s decision today made a President’s ability to both regulate Trade, and impose TARIFFS, more powerful and crystal clear, rather than less. There will no longer be any doubt, and the Income coming in, and the protection of our Companies and Country, will actually increase because of this decision. Based on longstanding Law and Hundreds of Victories to the contrary, the Supreme Court did not overrule TARIFFS, they merely overruled a particular use of IEEPA TARIFFS. The ability to block, embargo, restrict, license, or impose any other condition on a Foreign Country’s ability to conduct Trade with the United States under IEEPA, has been fully confirmed by this decision. In order to protect our Country, a President can actually charge more TARIFFS than I was charging in the past under the various other TARIFF authorities, which have also been confirmed, and fully allowed.
Therefore, effective immediately, all National Security TARIFFS, Section 232 and existing Section 301 TARIFFS, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being charged, and we are also initiating several Section 301 and other Investigations to protect our Country from unfair Trading practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
This is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest dispatch. The beginning, which I skipped, is about other countries’ holding important men accountable: former Prince Andrew, for his association with Jeffrey Epstein; and the former President of South Korea, who was sentenced to life in prison, for leading an insurrection to take control of the government.
There’s an implicit lesson here about accountability and lack thereof. None of the powerful men who are named in the Epstein Files have been prosecuted in this country. The Department of Justice redacted many or most of their names to be sure they would not be held to account. Those who led the insurrection of 2021 were never held accountable. Its foot soldiers were tried and convicted, but have since been pardoned by the leader of the insurrection.
The part that I thought you would find interesting are the latest examples of Trump’s vaingloriouness.
Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.
According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.
Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.
On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”
Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”
In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.
When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”
Why did she say he was not exonerated? She may have been referring to this case or to the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, in some photos with young girls.
New Hampshire is an unusual state. It is a magnet for libertarians. A significant number of them have been elected to the legislature, where they use their clout to “free” people from government.
Their current goal is to eliminate all vaccine requirements. Diseases that were long ago eliminated will come roaring back. People will die of diseases that could have been avoided. But they won’t be subject to government mandates.
At the same time, with no sense of irony, Some New Hampshire legislstors are demanding greater state control over what is taught in the classroom.
Garry Rayno of InDepthNH reports:
Two bills coming before the House this week are indicative of the New Hampshire Legislature: where it is heading and where it has been for the last three terms.
It is not a pretty picture unless you want to end government as we know it, or you want to use the sledgehammer of government to force everyone to believe what you do.
HB 1811 would repeal the immunization requirements for children in state statutes. All of them.
They include, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, and Hepatitis B.
Last week the House passed a bill to remove the Hepatitis b vaccine from the list.
The “compromise” position, said the prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Matt Drew, R-Manchester, is to retain the polio vaccine requirements.
House Bill 1792 or the “Charlie Kirk Act,” which would fittingly prohibit public schools from teaching critical race theory, LGBTQ+ ideologies and other alleged Marxist derived educational theories.
The bill also gives those who believe the law was breached, the right to bring a civil suit against the school and educators as well as code of conduct allegations against the teacher which could result in loss of license.
Over the last several years, the US District Court has struck down laws passed by this legislature on critical race theory or divisive concepts, and outlawing diversity, equality and inclusion programs calling them overly vague putting educators in harm’s way.
It is hard to imagine this law would pass muster either.
In the broader picture, most of the childhood diseases that plagued school children 60 or 70 years ago have been, if not eliminated, made negligible.
But measles is making a comeback in the last few years as is whooping cough because the vaccination rates in children have been trending down as parents seek to opt them out for religious or medical reasons.
In the past, immunizations were not an issue. People had their children vaccinated to protect them from the ravages of the diseases and ultimately to protect the population in general from the newborns to the elderly.
It was the responsible thing to do.
People like Health and Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. have long disparaged vaccines, as he and others gaslighted many into believing they cause autism.
The vaccination question found a red hot burner with the new COVID 19 shots when the decade began.…
It didn’t matter that the protesters were never going to get the COVID vaccine, they wanted to block the state’s most vulnerable to the disease from having a jab.
Two years ago, lawmakers passed a bill that would have taken away the Department of Health and Human Services’ authority to determine what vaccines children need, and would have had the legislature set the list, but it failed to become law.
These same folks also wanted to eliminate the state’s free vaccination program in conjunction with insurance companies, but had to settle for a study committee instead.
The prime sponsor of House Bill 1792, Rep. Mike Belcher, at the public hearing on the bill alleged a straight-line connection between Karl Marx’s theories and ideologies to the education system that fosters concepts like critical race theory, the oppressor and the oppressed models, LGBTQ+ ideologies, identity based ideologies and systemic inequity based on identity groups, or anti-constitutional narratives.
He claimed these ideologies undermine learning and unity, and the right of parents to direct their children’s upbringing.
He claimed these worldviews are responsible for the divisions in this country and have fostered the view that white Americans are inherently racists.
Belcher claimed his bill does not infringe on a teacher’s free speech, noting a teacher has no right to say anything he wants to children who are captive.
Legislation reaching down into classroom curriculum, which always has been the responsibility of local school boards and administrations, has been a recent trend with book and material bans, anti-abortion requirements and just plain interference and requirements meant to disrupt the system while many public schools struggle to provide a quality education under the burden of high property taxes, while the state fails to meets its constitutional obligation to fund an adequate education.
Before these attempts, bills targeting public education had always been quickly dismissed, but that was before there was an organized effort to end public education.
The chair of the Education Policy and Administration Committee Kristin Noble, R-Bedford, is a co-sponsor, as is Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn.
Noble recently posted on social media that schools should be segregated to separate Republicans from Democrats and called public schools Marxist indoctrination centers, while Osborne called them black boxes where children go in, but you don’t know what comes out.
Not that long ago, people followed the concept of the public good, or the long established “Social Contract” espoused by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The concept is that people surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for protection of their remaining rights, security and social stability, with the sovereign power residing in the people as a whole.
Under that concept, the industrialized world has been able to eliminate polio and other deadly diseases to benefit society as a whole.
But that concept has been eroding along with what was once considered the moral responsibility to look after your neighbors and the most vulnerable as well as yourself. Now it’s just yourself.
The idea of individual rights overriding the greater good is not new, but the founding fathers sought to protect against the tyranny of the majority overriding the rights of the minority.
What we have today is a tyranny of the majority in the legislature driven by Free Staters and Libertarians who want to impose their will on the people of New Hampshire in education, medicine, local planning and zoning, religion and social services. It is tyranny of the minority of New Hampshire residents.
One Republican representative, Travis Corcoran of Weare said in a social media post: “The point of Republican legislation is not just to change the laws, it’s to demoralize the left . . . and encourage them to leave.”
He is a co-sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Act.
If you are passing laws for reasons like that you do not belong in New Hampshire which has always been a welcoming state with a live and let live attitude.
Maybe we should have been more discerning about people moving here who claim to be for freedom, while they trample the freedoms of those who disagree with them.
That is the definition of hypocrisy.
And voters need to be more discerning about who they send to Concord.
Yesterday, the New Hampshire legislature voted on the bill to ban all vaccine mandates: it was defeated, 192-155.
However, the bill to prohibit “woke” curriculum passed by 184-164 and now goes to the State Senate. The bill is called the Charlie Kirk Act, after the founder of the rightwing Turning Points America, who was assassinated last year.
The bill prohibits the teaching of critical race theory, LGBT ideology, or other allegedly Marxist materials. Citizens can file civil suits against teachers found teaching prohibited ideas, and teachers might ultimately lose their license.
A similar law was previously struck down by the federal district court on grounds of vagueness.
Good news for Kentucky’s public schools and taxpayers! Unlike the Supreme Courts in Ohio and Indiana, Kentucky’s Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution means what it says.
Kentucky’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional!
What You Need To Know
The court unanimously upheld a lower court’s block of House Bill 9
Justices said charter schools aren’t “common schools” under the state constitution
Public funds for schools outside the “common” system require voter approval
Lawmakers could pursue charter schools only with a constitutional amendment
The court unanimously agreed with a lower court’s decision to block House Bill 9, which would have let publicly funded charter schools open in Kentucky. The justices ruled that charter schools, as they are set up now, are not considered public schools under the constitution, so they cannot get public funds without voter approval.
At issue are Sections 183, 184, and 186 of the Kentucky Constitution, which say the General Assembly must provide an “efficient system of common schools” and that public school funds may be allocated only to this system. The court said charter schools operate outside local school district control, can cap enrollment and are exempt from many regulations governing traditional public schools, placing them outside the constitutional definition of “common schools.”
Many years ago, I visited Kentucky to speak to the state school board association. The walls were decorated with banners from school districts. Clearly, the students, parents, and educators of Kentucky are devoted to their public schools. But the charter industry was determined to plant charter schools in Kentucky, even though the State Constitution requires a common school system.
The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that charter schools are NOT public schools!
From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Republican-backed bill establishing a statewide public charter school system was unconstitutional.
In a unanimous opinion authored by Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller, the state’s high court struck down 2022’s House Bill 9, which would have allowed approved groups to create and oversee charter schools funded with public education dollars.
Keller wrote that the language of the Kentucky Constitution with regard to the “common schools” system is clear on this front. She cited Section 184 of the document, which set up the public schools system. “The interest and dividends of said fund… shall be appropriated to the common schools, and to no other purpose. No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxation,” the section reads.
Keller’s opinion echoed a lower court ruling from Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. “Charter schools are not ‘common schools’ as contemplated under Sections 183, 184, and 186 of the Kentucky Constitution,” Keller wrote.
Charter schools — schools that are publicly funded but operated by independent groups with fewer regulations than most public schools — are technically legal in Kentucky, but HB 9 would have created a mechanism for funding them with public dollars. The bill legalizing charter schools, but not building in a mechanism to fund them, was passed in 2017 as a priority bill under then-Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican.
Since defeating Bevin in 2019, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has been a staunch opponent of funding charter schools.
Keller wrote that the court’s opinion does not amount to an evaluation of the policy arguments for charter schools, but rather the plain language of the constitution. “We cannot sell the people of Kentucky a mule and call it a horse, even if we believe the public needs a mule,” she wrote.
The law labeled charter schools as part of the state’s public education system but exempted them from many statutes and regulations governing traditional local school districts.
Keller wrote that the “public” label on those schools was something of a misnomer. “Our precedent… requires the system to be ‘unitary and uniform’ and not duplicative. It does not allow for a parallel system which is not within the common school system. A system that calls itself ‘public’ must be accountable to the public. Simply putting the label ‘public’ on something does not make it such,” Keller wrote.
Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article314759611.html#storylink=cpy
Mercedes Schneider is an amazing person, a keen-eyed researcher, and a gifted writer. She has a Ph.D. in applied statistics and research. She could have been a college professor, but she preferred to be a high school teacher. She understands the work, and she understands the students. That’s way different from journalists, who write best-selling books about schools based on their cursory experience, or scholars, who write their books based on data, not the lives of teachers or students.
I met Mercedes in the early days of the corporate reform movement, the one led by billionaires. With her sharp intellect, she saw through the hoax immediately. She saw what happened in New Orleans; she observed the influx of TFA teachers to staff the new charter schools. She was never taken in by the grandiose rhetoric of the reformers. She understood that the real goal of the so-called movement was not to improve public schools but to privatize public funding of schools.
In a remarkable burst of energy, she wrote three books in three years:
A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education (2014).
Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools (2015).
School Choice: The End of Public Education? (2016).
And she is still in the classroom.
I am now honored that Mercedes has reviewed my memoir. As you would expect, the review is insightful. She understood what I was trying to do: to pull away whatever artifice or cover there might be, and to lay my life bare. It’s not easy to do. She understood.
I urge you to open the link and read her perceptive review. It’s vintage Mercedes.
Just when you thought that you had heard “the worst decision” by the Trump regime, the one that will hurt people the most, along comes another. Trump is well known for denying climate change. Just days ago, his Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would no longer regulate the discharge of deadly gases. Perhaps it should change its name to the Environmental Pollution Agency.
But here comes another scientific reverse, possibly tied not to ideology, but to politics.
A leading American research lab is slated to lose its critical supercomputing facility, according to a letter released Thursday by the National Science Foundation.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s effort to disassemble the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, one of the world’s top weather and climate research centers, which the admin views as a source of climate change alarmism.
The computing center, which is slated to be turned over to an unspecified third party, runs weather and climate research models and is used by about 1,500 researchers from over 500 universities around the country. The work done on this supercomputer benefits the American people by leading to more accurate forecasts of extreme weather and climate events, aircraft turbulence and more.
The problem with spinning off the computing center away from the research center is that it could disrupt access to high performance computing. Much as with AI, high power computing is essential for simulating weather and climate and for evaluating the accuracy of new forecast models, which eventually end up contributing to what Americans see in the weather apps each day…
Some Colorado officials view the move as part of a retribution campaign being waged by the White House that is designed to pressure Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, into granting clemency to Tina Peters, a former county election clerk who was convicted in a 2020 election-related data breach scheme. Peters is a prominent 2020 election denier.
Diane Ravitch's blog 