Timothy Snyder: Trump Threatens Genocide

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2026 //
0

Timothy Snyder, scholar of European history, of tyranny and genocide, warns about the consequences of Trump threatening to wipe Iran and its ancient Persian civilization, off the earth. That’s genocide. Trump is an immoral monster.

Snyder writes:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

These are not the words of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Assad, or Putin. These are the words of the president of the United States, today.

Do not be distracted by circumstances. Of course there are emotions, personalities, politics, a war. None of this excuses that sentence. The reason we have a notion of genocide, and a convention on genocide, is to define certain actions as always and definitively wrong.

Are these “only words”? No, they cannot be “only words.” As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as “only words.” The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed.

Whatever happens tonight, the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely. If we are Americans, he has also changed our country. He has changed us, because he represents us; we voted for him, or we didn’t vote and allowed him to come to power, or we didn’t do enough to stop him. These words are America’s words, until and unless Americans reject them.

Yes, there have been other genocides, and there are other politicians who endorse genocide. That makes the words of the president worse, not better. Yes, the United States has undertaken atrocities before. That makes it all the more important, all the more urgent, that we catch ourselves now. Neither the evil nor the good in our history determines who we are. It is what we do now.

If we do not say something ourselves about this horror, we allow ourselves to be changed. 

Around the president there will be people, sadly, who work deliberately to normalize the language of genocide. There will be other politicians who find the right words to reject it. One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office. And these words should lead to resignations by everyone who works closely with the president.

But we cannot count on politicians. This is ultimately up to us, the citizens: for our own sake, for the sake of the future of the country, for the sake of a possibility of new beginnings, we need to say something, to someone else, to ourselves: this is simply wrong.

Whatever happens tonight, or any other night in this war, is now legally defined by the president’s statement. In the practical application of the law of genocide, the Genocide Convention of 1948, the difficulty is usually in proving “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Henceforth the intent is on the record, in the published words of the president of the United States and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces about the death of “a whole civilization.”

We all have good ethical and political reasons to reject the president’s words. But those who serve in government, and in the armed forces, have been placed under the legal shadow of genocide by what Trump wrote. To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state.

The concept of genocide was created by a survivor and an observer of atrocities, Rafał Lemkin, so that we could see ourselves, judge ourselves, stop ourselves. But genocide is not only a concept. It is also a crime under international law, signed by the United States in 1948 as a convention, ratified by the United States as a treaty in 1988. That makes the words I have quoted here the law of the land.

The president speaks genocide. And so we too must speak. Not only about crimes, but about their legal punishment.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, History, Trump, Tyranny

Anand: The Worst Sentence Ever Spoken by an American President

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2026 //
2

When I heard “the sentence,” the one in which Trump declared that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” my blood ran cold. Truly, I was heart-sick. I could not believe that an American President would make such a cruel, inhumane threat.

Where have we heard this kind of language? In the movies, it’s the Mafia mobster who says “do as I say or I will kill you and every member of your family. I don’t want to do it, but you leave me no choice.”

Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of a dreadful, bloody war said, in his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Trump harbors malice towards all, even our allies. He has charity for no one, seeing everyone outside his own family as a mark, someone he can bully, threaten, bribe, extort, cheat.

The best we can hope for is that Trump chickens out, claims to have an offer from Iran, which may be true or fake. He will humiliate himself and the U.S. before all the world. But he will declare victory and step back from the brink of Hell.

He once mused in public whether he would get into heaven. Clearly, he has doubts because he alone knows what crimes he has committed, what evil deeds are buried in his memory. After what he threatened to do today, there is no chance that he will be admitted to any heaven, unless the door is manned by Satan.

Anand Giriharadas is a brilliant writer whose blog is called The Ink. He had the same reaction I did. He wrote about it. He said what was in my heart. We used to think we were the good guys. Now, we are acting like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin. No regard whatever for human life. No humanity. No decency.

Anand writes:

This morning, President Trump published one of the worst sentences ever verbalized by an American head of state. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he posted. And from there the statement continued:

Screen Shot 2026-04-07 at 10.53.42 AM.png

Even by Trump’s basement standards, it is an appalling, lawless, barbaric statement — launched by that chilling first sentence. But it is also a profoundly revealing text.

Start at the beginning. Trump has chosen the word “civilization.” Not regime, not government, not reign, not even country. A civilization. And not just “a civilization” but “a whole civilization,” every last shred of it. It is almost as if Trump heard critics of the Israeli and American-backed assault on Gaza, heard the charges of genocide, and decided to lean into that idea with Iran. It is as if he is striving to become what his critics have accused him of being.

The United Nations, in its account of the law of genocide, notes that it is a crime that is famously hard to prove. The missing element is very often intent. This, it says,

is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique.

But here Trump has eliminated the issue. In the future, intent will not be hard to prove — it will not even be as demanding as it was in Gaza — because Trump just posted it online, with the world as witness.

The second half of the sentence is important, too. We are told this civilization, to be buried by Trump, will never rise again. “Again,” we should note, is one of the most important words in the Trump dictionary (available online for $19.99 if you act now!). Trump’s entire politics is that of Again-ism. What was great can be restored. What was lost can be reclaimed. What was ours and now is shared can be made ours again. So to insist not only that a civilization will be genocided and removed from the living, but also that it will have no “agains,” is to transcend the longstanding and bipartisan hostility to this specific regime in Iran and to suggest that the problem is not simply this government, these ayatollahs, but all the blood of all these people in this place, that there is nothing in this civilization that is worthy of restoration, that there is no germ of value beneath the regime. In this story, Iran is no longer a great old civilization of the world hijacked by a bad regime. It is a culture rotten to the core. This is a dramatic departure in U.S. policy.

Now, in the second sentence, Trump pivots. First he is the genocidaire, proudly so. Now he is the abusive ex-husband at the door. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he really doesn’t, it’s really you who is bringing this upon yourself, he is not acting, he’s just reacting to you, you are the one doing this. He isn’t hurting Iran; Iran is hurting Iran.

From there he moves into total delusion. Having failed at his goal of regime change, by replacing an old ayatollah who was close to death’s door with his considerably younger son, Trump claims to have achieved “Complete and Total Regime Change.” So first he was the cold-blooded whole-people killer. Then he was the abusive ex insisting that Iran is bringing this on itself. And now he is the gaslighter-in-chief, telling us he has done the opposite of what he has done. In fact, he replaced one ayatollah with another who may have decades ahead to pursue a bottomless grudge.

Then: “We will find out tonight.” What he is doing — what he is actively committing — becomes passive. We’re going to find out! Let’s see. The president seems determined to make the United States true to an anti-imperialist shitposter’s most reductive idea of it: a republic founded on genocide threatening genocide unless you free up oil. However much truth may have lurked in phrases like the above, American presidents past have tried to disprove or conceal it. Trump is making this vision of America his foreign policy legacy: oil, or else genocide.

And there is the reality-TV element. The deadline is even in prime time. The man still knows how to make a show. It’s all he knows.

There is something potent in the closing swipe at 47 years of “extortion, corruption, and death,” because while he means the Iranian regime, he is of course the 47th president, and it won’t be lost on many that extortion, corruption, and death have been some of the hallmarks of this wannabe American ayatollah, among whose ambitions have been enabling the spread of religious nationalism, sending women back in time to an age of second-class status, and consolidating absolute control.

There is a ring of truth in there somewhere. Forty-seven will finally end. It will. It is hard to see now, but there is life on the other side of this. Life on the other side of this barbarism, this abuse, this delusion and manipulation, this awful reality show, this corruption and mendacity and selfishness.

Whatever bombs are dropped, Iran’s magnificent civilization will not die. The present uncivilized incarnation of the government of the United States of America will.

Categories Education Reform

Trump Says Federal Government Can’t Pay for Daycare, Medicare, Medicaid

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2026 //
4

In a recent speech, Trump said that the federal government’s top priority was paying for war and national defense. He said that the feds could not afford to pay for daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid. Programs like that, he said, should be paid for by the states, not the federal government.

Trump presented Congress with a budget that requested $1.5 trillion for the military–an increase over the present $1 trillion– while cutting domestic programs.

Categories Education Reform

Trump Finds New Ways to Put Your Money in His Bank Account

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2026 //
8

Attorney Dina Doll wrote this article for the Meidas Touch Network. She describes the ways that Trump is moving government funds–your taxes–directly into his pockets. The man’s a wizard.

She writes:

Davos, Switzerland. 2026 Jan 22. President Donald Trump participates in the Board of Peace Signing Charter Announcement and Signing Ceremony at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum. Editorial credit: Robert V Schwemmer / Shutterstock.com

You didn’t buy the Bible. You didn’t mint the coin. You didn’t sign up for Trump University or bid on the NFTs or book a room at Mar-a-Lago. You opted out of every scheme, every hustle, every grift and it didn’t matter. Because while you were watching an illegal war burn through a billion dollars a day and TSA workers suffered because Congress couldn’t find the money to pay them, Trump was doing something quieter. He was taking yours.

Trump has grifted his entire life. Now he’s just taking it.

The State Department transferred $1.25 billion in foreign aid to Trump’s Board of Peace, pulling $1 billion from international disaster assistance, $200 million from peacekeeping operations, and $50 million from international organizations. Money that Congress authorized for hurricanes and refugees, moved without a congressional vote, into a fund that Trump created by executive order and controls personally. When reporters asked the State Department about it, a spokesperson said they had nothing to announce at this time.

The Board of Peace has one defining characteristic. Trump controls it forever. He named himself chairman for life. No audits. No transparency requirements. No conflict of interest rules. Countries pay $1 billion into a fund he runs to get a seat at the table. It has transferred nothing to Gaza, disclosed nothing about its spending, and received $1.25 billion of your disaster relief money without a word of explanation.

When he leaves the White House he keeps the fund. That is not a loophole. That is the design.

Of course, that’s not the only action Trump has recently taken to pay himself straight from the taxes Americans pay to the federal government. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax records by a contractor. The problem, beyond the absurdity of the number, is that Trump controls the government he is suing. He confirmed it himself: “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself.” The DOJ attorneys who would defend against this lawsuit serve at his pleasure. Bondi is literally the only thing protecting the American people from Trump’s attempt to steal billions of our hard-earned money. Which means, there is an ineffective counsel sitting at the defense table for the American people, Trump on the other side of the negotiating table and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ready to sign the check.

He went from selling people something worthless to skipping the transaction entirely.

Disaster relief money in a fund he controls forever. A $10 billion lawsuit against himself with your money as the prize. A billion dollars a day on an unauthorized war while TSA workers went without pay and American healthcare credits slashed.

There was always money. It just wasn’t going to you.

The grift required something from you. A purchase. A click. A willing suspension of disbelief. You could say no to the Bible. You cannot opt out of your tax dollars. You have already paid. The question is whether enough people understand what is being done with that money to make enough noise that someone has to answer for it.

Americans do not like cheaters. The reason the fraud of Trump’s University landed everywhere it landed was because the story was simple. He took money from people who trusted him and gave them nothing back.

This is that story. Bigger numbers. Higher office. No brochure required.

Tell someone who doesn’t know. The noise is the only friction left.

Dina Doll is: Legal Analyst/Attorney/Community Leader/Mom MeidasTouch Host & Legal AF Contributor/ I explain the law because the law belongs to us all

Categories Corruption, Ethics, For-Profit, Trump

The 25th Amendment Won’t Save Us from the Mad King

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2026 //
6

Appalled by Trump’s erratic behavior and his threats to commit war crimes in Iran–as he said in a news conference, to destroy every bridge and every power plant in Iran–many political commentators are calling for the implementation of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

Last night, Laurence O’Donnell devoted most of his news program on MS NOW to the claim that Trump is insane, and it is time to activate the 25th Amendment.

Trump’s vulgar message to Iranian leaders, posted on Easter Sunday morning, set off a new round of demands to get this unhinged man out of the Oval Office, far away from the power to start a nuclear war on a whim.

After reading Trump’s message, even former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once close to Trump, wrote in a tweet:

Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.
I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.

Certainly Democrats and most independents would like to see this menace to world peace, the global economy, democratic institutions, and national security removed from office. No doubt JD Vance, despite his sycophancy, quietly would love to be catapulted into the presidency.

BUT…..it’s not going to happen.

To remove a President from office, the Vice President and a majority of his Cabinet must agree that the President is incapable of fulfilling the duties of his office.

Trump’s Cabinet would never agree to remove him from office unless he did something unthinkable. They were chosen not for their competence, but for their personal loyalty to him. Can you imagine Pete Hegseth or wrestling queen Linda McMahon voting to remove Trump? The unthinkable that might change even their minds might be…Trump running around the White House grounds stark naked; Trump ordering the military to drop a nuclear bomb on some country, friend or foe, because they disrespected him; Trump ordering ICE or the FBI to murder his political enemies; Trump engaging contractors to demolish the entire White House so he can erect a high-rise replacement, with his name at the bottom and the top in flashing lights ….The possibilities are limited.

But let’s imagine that Trump does something beyond my poor imagination, something so awful that a majority of his lackeys and sycophants vote to remove him.

That’s not enough. Their recommendation goes to the Congress, where two-thirds of both Houses must approve his removal.

How likely is that?

I say zilch, unless a black swan happens to build a nest on his bleached blonde tresses. A black swan, you may recall, is a metaphor for a totally unprecedented event, one that almost no one anticipates.

The 25th Amendment is not going to remove Trump, because those around him and Republicans in Congress are afraid of him or idolize him. There is only one way to curb Trump’s rage, incompetence, and boundless narcissism: Turn out the vote in November 2026. Sweep every Trump enabler out of office. Restore checks and balances. Elect a Congress that will investigate corruption, grifting, and profiteering. Elect a Congress that will stop his demolition of federal agencies and departments. Elect a Congress prepared to fight his attacks on enforcement of civil rights laws. Elect a Congress that will encourage and protect the votes of every citizen, not seek to suppress them.

The 25th Amendment will not save us. But a Congress devoted to the Constitution and to democracy can limit the damage that Trump has imposed on our government and on our relations with the rest of the world.

A historical note:

The National Constitution Center summarized the 25th Amendment, passed by Congress after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

AMENDMENT XXV. Passed by Congress July 6, 1965. Ratified February 10, 1967. Note: Article II, section 1, of the Constitution was affected by the 25th amendment.

The relevant content–removing a President who is unfit but unwilling to resign–is Section Four.

Section 4 addresses the dramatic case of a President who may be unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside. It provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The initial deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of either the Cabinet or some other body that Congress may designate (though Congress has never done so). If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President. If and when the President pronounces himself able, the deciding group has four days to disagree. If it does not, the President retakes his powers. But if it does, the Vice President keeps control while Congress quickly meets and makes a decision. The voting rule in these contested cases favors the President; the Vice President continues acting as President only if two-thirds majorities of both chambers agree that the President is unable to serve.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Greetings from the Astronauts of Artemis 2!

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
4

Things are looking bad these days. We have a rightwing lunatic as President who thinks he’s a king. We are entangled in a war with religious fanatics who are gleefully tearing down the global economy by closing passage through a crucial, narrow waterway. We have a Congress that is supine and subservient to our Mad King. Prices of everything are spiraling up because of aforementioned war.

Time for some cheerful news! Watch this brief clip made by the four astronauts aboard Artemis 2, which has already gone further into space than anyone else. They passed the old record of near 250,000 miles, and they will see the dark side of the moon. That’s happening about now.

They are having a good time.

Categories Humor

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Is Not Well

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
14

Heather Cox Richardson reviews Trump’s erratic behavior since he started a war against Iran. He repeatedly announces that he has won the war, that negotiations are going well, and then threatens Iran with obliteration. Is this incoherence “the art of the deal” or is something else going on?

Remember the days when foreign policy was debated by experienced diplomats of the National Security council behind closed doors? When policies were the result of deliberation, not announced at 3 am on social media by the President, acting alone to vent his grievances? Remember when negotiations were led by the Secretary of State, not the President’s son-in-law?

That’s the way it used to be done. That’s the way it’s done in other countries. In the U.S., today, in the Trump era, one man makes policy in the middle of the night, depending on his whim.

She writes:

At 8:03 this morning, Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

There are many things that could be going on with this ultimatum, which actually doesn’t sound like Trump’s usual style, in the same way the post of yesterday morning didn’t.

The post appears to be threatening to commit war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure, and it appears to suggest Trump is considering using tactical nuclear weapons. He emphasized the production of such weapons in his first administration. He seemed to encourage this interpretation in an interview with Rachel Scott of ABC News today. She said Trump “told me the conflict should be over in days, not weeks but if no deal is made he’s blowing up the whole country with ‘very little’ off the table. ‘If [it] happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, we’re blowing up the whole country,’ he said. I asked if there’s anything off limits. ‘Very little,’ he said.”

In 2023 a book by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt alleged that in 2017, when Trump was warning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on social media that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” behind closed doors he was talking about launching a preemptive strike against North Korea and of using a nuclear weapon against the country and blaming someone else for the strike .

Schmidt reports that Trump’s White House chief of staff at the time, retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, brought military leaders to try to explain to Trump why that would be a bad idea and finally got him to move away from the plan by telling him he could prove he was the “greatest salesman in the world” by finding a diplomatic solution to his fight with the North Korean leader.

In his own book about that period, journalist Bob Woodward wrote: “The American people had little idea that July through September of 2017 had been so dangerous.”

But Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo told Woodward: “We never knew whether it was real or whether it was a bluff.”

And that is another way to look at the post from Trump’s social media account: that he is panicked that he has not been able to bully other countries into fixing the mess he created by attacking Iran and precipitating the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and is now simply trying to bully Iran. In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.

Trump’s crazy post does, after all, push back yet again the deadline for his threats to rain destruction on Iran, which he then extended again in another post at 12:38 P.M. saying: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

This dynamic was not lost on Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, who noted: “It was March 23rd. Then March 27th. Then March 30th. Then he gave that weird address on April 1st. [N]ew deadline April 4th. Then April 6th at 7 AM. Then April 7th at 8 PM. And now another address tomorrow at 1 PM. The chaos is intentional.” She also noted that his deadlines and his abandonment of them often seem tied to the rhythms of the stock market.

In an interview with Barak Ravid of Axios today shortly after this morning’s post, Trump reiterated that “if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there” but also said the U.S. is “in deep negotiations” with Iran and that he thinks a deal can be reached. Trump told Ravid that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—not Secretary of State Marco Rubio—are talking with the Iranians. Sources told Ravid that mediators from Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye are facilitating the talks.

But Iranian officials are refusing to deal with Witkoff and Kushner after they apparently misunderstood earlier negotiations and instead told Trump the talks weren’t going well before he launched strikes. Neither Witkoff nor Kushner is a trained diplomat, and both have deep financial ties to the Middle East. Notably, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who urged Trump to start the Iran war, has invested at least $2 billion in Kushner’s private equity firm.

On March 13, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times reported that Kushner is trying to raise $5 billion or more for his private equity firm from Middle East governments at the same time as he is also supposed to be negotiating peace in the region.

But Stephen Kalin, Eliot Brown, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already cost the Saudis about $10 billion, and the grand plans of MBS were already falling short of money. Some of those plans were U.S. investments. The reporters note that even before the war, the Saudi’s sovereign-wealth fund, the same one that invested in Kushner’s private equity firm, had sold much of its U.S. stock portfolio. Last year, MBS promised to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S. Those investments are now under review.

Regardless of the inspiration for Trump’s post, by itself it tells a very clear story. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi posted: “The American president has lost his mind.”

Journalist Steven Beschloss wrote: “This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

The 25th Amendment establishes a process through which a majority of the Cabinet and the Vice President, or another body Congress designates, can remove a president deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Murphy was not the only one thinking along those lines. Hollie Silverman of Newsweekreported that on the prediction market platform Kalshi, which allows traders to buy “yes” or “no” shares on the question “Will the 25th Amendment be used during Trump’s presidency?” “yes” has moved in recent days from 28.6% to 35.1%.

—

Notes:

US Deploys New Low-Yield Nuclear Submarine Warhead
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/28/689510716/trump-administration-begins-production-of-a-new-nuclear-weapon
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-chances-of-being-removed-by-25th-amendment-climb-11785658
https://2017-2021.state.gov/nuclear-weapons-policy-in-the-trump-administration/
https://en.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/a-sense-of-deja-vu-in-the-us-nuclear-domain-trump-and-the-prospective-policy-shift
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-discussed-using-nuclear-weapon-north-korea-2017-blaming-someone-rcna65120
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-threat-trump-bob-woodward_n_5f5ae074c5b62874bc1ad130
Over 100 International Law Experts Warn: U.S. Strikes on Iran Violate UN Charter and May Be War Crimes
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/05/trump-iran-deal-power-plants
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-another-big-reason-trump-is-stuck-in-the-gulf
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2026/03/24/jd-vance-eyed-take-over-iran-talks/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/30/trump-iran-war
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/the-back-channel-diplomacy-behind-trumps-u-turn-on-iran-b70efc60
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-futuristic-vision-reality-3245a8b5

X:

ChrisMurphyCT/status/2040776740465758422

Bluesky:

momcjl.bsky.social/post/3mis5h2vqf22j

atrupar.com/post/3mircanvivc27

brandonfriedman.bsky.social/post/3mirrdrhshc2e

muellershewrote.com/post/3mirt6ivxbs2j

muellershewrote.com/post/3mirrzjeacc2j

markey.senate.gov/post/3mirmazhmfs2j

rrkennison.bsky.social/post/3mirnrdmn2k2p

frankfigliuzzi.bsky.social/post/3miqtagxuhs2o

stevenbeschloss.bsky.social/post/3miqrghkdds2n

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Categories Accountability, Character, Disruption, Extremism, Insane, International, Trump

John Thompson: Beware of the Effort to Revive the NCLB Punishments, by Stealth

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
4

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, was stunned by some survey results released about parents’ opinions on education. He took a deep dive, read the raw data, and discovered that the survey was conducted by ExcelInEd, Jeb Bush’s organization. Excel promotes high-stakes accountability for public schools but no accountability whatsoever for voucher schools, which they also promote.

ExcelinEd has familiar game plan: they use inaccurate NAEP statistics to defame public schools, demand more accountability to crush the morale of principals, teachers, and parents, then insist that vouchers and charters are the way forward. As Josh Cowen showed in his book The Privateers, voucher schools get far worse results than public schools, and numerous studies have shown that charter schools are usually no better than public schools and often much worse.

Thompson writes:

Patricia Levesque, the executive director of ExcelinEd, recently wrote a commentary about a survey of 500 Oklahoma parents, claiming that more than 80% of them want “a state testing and accountability system to measure student achievement, and they expect honesty and accuracy about their children’s grade level performance.”  

Her stressing honesty is ironic because ExcelinEd is known for spreading the falsehood that reliable NAEP Proficiency test scores correlate with “grade level.” That helps rightwing organizations like the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs proclaim, “Just 14 percent of third-grade students in both the Oklahoma City and Tulsa districts tested proficient or better on state ELA tests.” In fact, NAEP Basic is closer to grade level.

So, I took a dive into the survey. My reading of it was very different than Levesque’s. 

In some ways, the survey she described  is consistent with the Education Department parent survey that State Superintendent Lindel Fields released. But Levesque’s interpretation of the results was very different than Fields’ analysis of the state’s parent feedback.

The survey Levesque cited found that 74% of parents want a pay raise for teachers, and another 74% say we spend too little on education. Her study found that 80% of parents were very or somewhat satisfied with their school but, for some reason, it adds, “While overall positive, this fails to hit the common 95% satisfaction sought in commercial endeavors.”

While 78% of parents support retention by 3rd grade of students who don’t read on “level,” parents estimate that about 83% students read at or above grade level; and 78% are confident in the way their schools teach reading.

FYI, in 1998, 80% of Oklahoma 8th graders read at that level, but now about 59% do. My reading of the research, and classroom experience, attributes the subsequent decline to the way that No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top undermined the teaching of History, Science, Arts, and of the background knowledge that is essential for reading comprehension; huge funding cuts; COVID; and Ryan Walters; as well as the rise of social media.

Yes, 83% of the survey are supportive of student testing, which is no surprise. But, the study doesn’t dig into the difference between testing for tracking student progress, as opposed to high-stakes testing. After all, there is great support for testing for diagnostic purposes, as opposed to the reward-and-punish testing that has been rampant since the NCLB was enacted.

Conversely, the Education Departments’ parent survey seems to be calling for schools to tackle the crucial issues that they were forced to ignore, as districts invested in high-stakes test-prep.

When Superintendent Fields explained that the results of statewide surveys of educators and parents, informed the budget priorities he is seeking. Superintendent Fields reported, “Early literacy, support systems to improve behavior and mental health resources and teacher recruitment and retention are among the top three concerns for all groups surveyed.”

The Education Department survey found that some parents called for a reduction of standardized testing, while others did not address it.  

The parents survey included repeated calls for teaching critical thinking skills, and media literacy; identifying misinformation; and early grade emphasis on literacy.

It explained that parents “highlighted the importance of both academic and life skills, emphasizing the need for students to be well-prepared for real-world challenges.” 

Parents said that misinformation is very prevalent, and children need to be taught how to tell fact from fiction. They understand that learning how to be critical consumers of information is “literally the foundation of a successful life.” They know that social media and A.I. can make kids “susceptible to conspiracy theories and propaganda.” 

What I didn’t see in the parents’ responses was calls for data-driven accountability; online, as opposed to personal tutoring for 3rd graders; or simple “miracles.”

What I saw was a desire to return to personal connections. I saw goals that would require more support for educators, as well as requiring cooperation with social workers, health providers, and mentors that are necessary for preparing children for a full life in the 21st century. 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Data, Education Industry, Florida, Oklahoma, Standardized Testing

Stephen Dyer: Ramaswamy Wants to Cripple Public Higher Education in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
2

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio.

Stephen Dyer, former legislator, current budget watchdog, warns that Ramaswamy wants to close some of Ohio’s institutions of higher education and make the cost of college even higher for the families of Ohio.

Vivek’s proposal to close public colleges follows years of Republican disinvestment in higher education and public education. Rising costs cause enrollments to decline. Declining enrollments are then an excuse to close colleges.

Why does Ohio want a less-educated public?

Please open the link to his excellent article to read the footnotes.

Dyer writes:

They’re hoping you don’t notice.

Notice that for 30 years, Ohio Republicans have slowly starved higher education funding, which has made the $1 million promise of a college education less attainable for middle-class families.

They’re hoping you fall for the anti-college mythology — they waste money, are giving kids diplomas for basket weaving, are full of hippies. Whatever. They don’t care. Just buy it, already!

They want you to blame anyone but them, even though it’s all their fault.

A personal note. I’m a tuition-paying parent for a public university student.

It’s now more expensive to send my son to Ohio State as an in-state resident than it was for my parents to send me to Tufts University in the 1990s.

Yeah. That’s crazy.

But that cost hike wasn’t because Ohio State is so inefficient or concerned with basket weaving majors that I’m paying through the nose for my son’s education¹. 

Nope.

Ohio Republicans made this happen. They’ve steadily made the unattainably expensive college degree a reality since they started dominating the statehouse and Governor’s mansion in 1994. In fact, it seems the two things they’ve consistently done from a public policy perspective is de-fund both public K-12 education and higher education.

The numbers don’t lie.

So, for example, in 1979, 11.6% of the state budget went to pay for the State Share of Instruction (SSI) — the direct funding portion of the state’s higher education budget that essentially subsidizes in-state tuition (it does more than that, but trying to keep it simple). That was the highest proportion on record.

Next year, it will be 4.7% — the lowest on record. 

If the state committed as much of the state budget to SSI next year as it did in 1979, the state would be providing $3.2 billion more just to SSI. 

How much is that, you ask?

In the 2024-2025 school year, the total tuition collected by all 2-year and 4-year public higher education institutions by all students, in-state and out-of-state, was $3.6 billion. 

That’s right. 

If Ohio had maintained the same commitment to its college students that it did in 1979, we could have tuition free — or essentially free — 2- and 4-year public universities for every Ohio resident … and then some. 

But we don’t even have to go back to 1979. If you went back to the last time the percentage of SSI funding went up under Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2009-2010 school year, you’d have another $1.6 billion. Or if you went back to the first year Republicans had complete governmental control — 1994-1995, you’d have $1.8 billion.

Wanna bet whether Ohio’s public 4-year institutions would be facing an “enrollment crisis” if tuition were reduced this much, Vivek?

Yet for some reason, Ramaswamy seems to want to make closing University of Akron and Kent State University — and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs — a tentpole of his gubernatorial bid. 

As a former stat legislator who used to represent parts of Summit and Portage counties — where those two universities reside — I’m gonna say that’s certainly a strategy.

A fucking stupid one. 

But it’s a strategy.

This is not rocket science. As state commitment drops, the burden placed on college students and their families increases. The correlation is strong, as my buddy Claude pointed out here²:

Notice there’s a little blip in the percentage during the FY10 and FY11 years. Just as a reminder, those were the only two years of a politically divided legislature and Democratic Governor.

As an aside, you’ll recognize a similar blip on the state share of public K-12 education funding during this same period — the only year on record that more state than local property tax funding paid for Ohio’s public schools. 

By the way, did I mention this all good stuff happened in a budget I helped negotiate during the height of the Great Recession? Please excuse my shameless public policy prowess plug (and alliteration).

Every other year on that chart, Ohio Republicans controlled every lever of power. And the pattern is clear:

  1. Defund the state funding stream that makes college affordable for working families
  2. Make that option far less affordable for those same families
  3. Then when fewer students attend the universities that rely on first-generation students (Kent State and University of Akron come to mind, don’t they Vivek?), blame the universities
  4. Count on everyone both not noticing the steady drain of resources while they get hooked by the “out-of-touch” higher education narrative 
  5. Call on the schools to stop focusing on educating our students and instead become corporations’ training arms
  6. Or, in the case of the Ohio GOP’s billionaire gubernatorial candidate, shut them down

This is all Republicans’ fault. They didn’t have to do this. There wasn’t some crisis that forced them to divest from SSI since they took power. 

In fact, according to the most recent Grapevine report, while student share of higher education cost has gone up since 1980, it’s been by 18 percentage points nationally. 

In Ohio, that increase has jumped 24 points. 

The average Ohio student has to come up with 57 percent of their higher education cost. The national average is 39 percent — still way too high for a country that has to rely on innovation to dominate the world economy. 

But Ohio is 46 percent worse than that. 

In only 10 states do families have to pay a higher share of the higher education freight than Ohioans.

Since 1980, Ohio has cut its appropriations for higher ed overall by 14.8 percent. The national average over that period was a 13 percent increase.

Look. I know Vivek wants to shutter two of the state’s main economic and intellectual engines because they struggle with enrollment. But that struggle isn’t because of what he says — inefficiency, lack of excellence (whatever that is), etc.

I think that spending 30 years dropping the share of the state budget going to subsidize tuition below 5 percent for the first time ever might explain why fewer kids go to college in Ohio than they used to and why enrollment at first-generation universities — whose students typically come from working-class backgrounds — has struggled to grow. 

Yeah. 

That sure as hell seems more likely than whatever the fuck Vivek is imagining under his Jimmy Neutron hair. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Higher Education, Ohio

Retired Teacher: The Answer to All Complaints About Reading

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2026 //
29

A reader who identifies as “Retired Teacher” explains the best way to teach reading. The best way is to start by understanding that there is no single way to teach reading. The best way is to assess what’s right for the students in front of you. Some need help in phonics; some don’t. Some are already fluent readers and need challenging and engaging stuff to read.

RT writes:

Most competent reading teachers are effective when they diversify instruction based on the needs of the learner. Generally, the first step in effective reading instruction is to assess students. What often results in elementary classrooms is that teachers often end up placing students into a group with other students with similar needs. Some students arrive in kindergarten reading fluently. They have clearly mastered phonics so there is no need to spend time on phonics lessons the student does not need. Both Diane Ravitch and myself grew up in the “See, Say” era of reading instruction. We didn’t learn phonics. We deduced the sound system from reading it. This method will not work for many students, but there are some that would be successful with this approach. 

All learners have strengths and weaknesses. Other students may have other issues like a difficulty with auditory discrimination, and teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction based on the needs of students. By the way a student with auditory discrimination or memory problems will struggle and flounder in a science of reading environment. This student may have to write the word in order to basically memorize it.

I am a certified reading teacher. I have taught many struggling students, most of whom were English language learners, to read successfully and fluently in English. Part of the reason for positive results was due to the assessing and addressing what the student needed to understand and apply the skill and become a good reader. There is no magic to this process. It is called diversifying instruction, and many competent teachers adjust teaching to meet student needs. Whatever method is used, it needs to meet students’ needs, offer the student a degree of success through application, and be engaging. Professional teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction without government interference.

Categories Education Reform, Literacy, Literature
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