Graham Platner Must Step Aside. Maine Democrats Should Act Quickly to Replace Him

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
0

I strongly supported Graham Platner as the likeliest candidate to beat Senator Susan Collins in November. I was wrong, as were many others who took him at his word.

I didn’t care about his tattoo. He told us that he had gone through PTSD after four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many others, I forgave him his trespasses because he was a viable progressive candidate who had energized a large following in Maine. He held town halls all over the state, and his popularity grew. Bernie Sanders endorsed him, as did other prominent Democrats.

The latest allegation against him was the last straw. A woman he dated said he raped her. She had corroboration, from friends and her therapist. Rape is a bright red line.

Platner is finished. It’s over. He was not honest with the voters.

Susan Collins is running for her sixth term in the Senate. She has already served in the Senate for 30 years. She should have retired and let someone else take her place. It’s time for a change.

Collins should never be forgiven her endorsement of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. He told her he would never overturn Roe v. Wade. She believed him. He lied. Other Republicans would have voted no if she had voted no.

There are other well-qualified people ready to join the race. The Senate should not be a gerontocracy.

Maine Democrats must choose a replacement for Platner by July 27. Can they do it? Of course they can.

David Dayen, editor of The American Prospect, wrote previously about Platner’s character flaws and Collins’ corruption. He believes that Maine Democrats should hold a snap election. He calls it a “lighthouse primary.”

Good luck to Maine Democrats in picking someone who can defeat Collins and help create a Democratic majority in the Senate.

The stakes are high.

Categories Maine, Politics, Scandals

Trump Tries to Win Midterms by Mimicking Joe McCarthy

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
4

Trump has a new line of malarkey to peddle. He has decided that Democrats are not only “Dumbocrats,” they are Communists.

Trump does not know anything about bipartisanship. He knows nothing about the tradition of treating the other party with respect. He knows only how to dish out insults and ridicule.

He always has to stir up his base by having someone to hate. Communists are a good target.

When he spoke at Mount Rushmore on July 3, he warned about a “communist menace,” a threat posed by the election of two Democratic Socialists in New York City and one in Denver, Colorado.

  • He said, “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land.”  
  • He added, “You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”  
  • He described communism as “a mortal threat to American liberty,” and argued that Americans must defend the country’s founding principles against it.  

Again, at his late-night speech on July 4, he warned about the danger of the Communist threat.

Among his statements were:

  • “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America.”  
  • He added, “It’s like a cancer, you got to cut it out.”  
  • He also declared that America “will never be a communist country“.

Democrats are not Communists.

Democratic Socialists are not Communists. They are Democratic Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and like the parties in Northern European nations such as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. These are nations that spend generously for the health, education, and welfare of their citizens.

Does Trump know the distinction between Democratic Socialists and Communists? It’s hard to know since his knowledge is not expansive.

But he has his target. He will use smear tactics. He will fulminate about the “communist menace,” and about others who “don’t love America” as he allegedly does.

After all these years, we know who he is and we know he will lie without hesitation.

Be prepared. He is desperate.

Categories Education Reform

FBI’s Top Priority: Finding Proof That Trump Won in 2020!

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
1

The FBI has assigned 200 agents to pore through the ballots cast in the Presidential election in Georgia in 2020. You may recall that in 2020, Georgia was controlled by Republicans. In January 2, 2021, Trump called Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and asked him to find 11,780 votes, which was one more than Joe Biden had. Raffensberger wouldn’t do it. The Georgia votes were counted and recounted three times, once by hand. In all three recounts, Trump lost. But Trump is still searching for proof that he won.

What a sore loser!

The Associated Press reported:

ATLANTA (AP) — The FBI has asked its field offices across the country to dedicate more than 200 staffers to its investigation of the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County.

A memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press calls for the FBI to “surge” 260 investigative analysts and staff operations specialists to the effort, which it described as a “priority investigation.”

It said each of them is to conduct a check of an estimated 708 records by July 17. While the memo does not describe the investigation, people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal decision-making confirmed the request was to help with the Georgia 2020 election investigation.

FBI agents in January seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of Atlanta. A Fulton County spokesperson declined to comment citing a pending investigation. The contents of the memo were first reported by MS NOW.

President Donald Trump and his allies have made false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election. Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The Justice Department has previously said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Georgia, Trump

Why Ohio Got a Terrible Grade on the NPE Report

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
0

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, was the author of the recent report Public Schooling in America: Our 2026 Report Card on the States. The subtitle: THE BEST AND THE WORST STATEHOUSES FOR SUPPORTING PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THEIR STUDENTS.

She wrote recently to explain why Ohio received a low grade:

Ohio lost more points on privatization in the NPE Report Card than any other state — more than Florida, more than Arizona. Its charter and voucher policies are among the most expansive and least accountable in the nation. The only reason Ohio does not rank at the very bottom is that it continues to fund its public schools at a relatively adequate level. That margin is shrinking.

The charter sector tells a particularly troubling story. Half of all charter schools in Ohio are operated by for-profit companies — an unusually high share even by national standards. Yet nearly half of all charter schools that have ever opened with enrollment in the state have since closed, a closure rate of 49 percent. These are not isolated failures. They reflect a system designed with too few guardrails and too little accountability.

A significant portion of these for-profit schools are credit recovery operations and online schools — low-cost, maximum-profit models held to lower academic standards than traditional public schools. Nearly one in three charter students in Ohio — 30 percent — attends a virtual school or an institution where instruction is delivered primarily online.

What explains so much low-quality supply? Ohio’s authorizing structure is a central culprit. The state permits multiple authorizers, including nonprofits that collect millions in authorizing fees and have a financial incentive to approve and retain schools regardless of performance.

Ohio also has more voucher programs than any other state in the country — eight in total — further diverting public dollars away from the students and communities that depend on public schools.

If Ohio continues on its current trajectory, the consequences are predictable: further erosion of public school funding, further decline in the rankings, and fewer educational options as the neighborhood public school choice disappears. 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

John Thompson: The Absurd Attacks on Randi After She Criticized Tech in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
7

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, thought that AFT President Randi Weingarten’s recent speech on the dangers of technology in the classroom was balanced and thoughtful. Yet the Trump administration attacker for raising valid questions. Trump and McMahon have such a knee-jerk aversion to unions, especially the teachers’ unions, that they had to attack her, even if what she said made sense.

Thompson wrote:

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave an impressive speech at the National Press Club, explaining that students are “drowning in tech,” and they “need their teachers, real human beings, not robots and not chatbots.”

As I will explain, Weingarten’s presentation synthesized both – scholarly research and communication with diverse groups of educators and AI users. It was a perfect example of bridging political differences. When I first read the transcript of her plan, I thought it would be hard to understand how anyone who wants to improve education would not want to join her team effort to make life better for young people in the 21st century.   

But, not surprisingly, I was wrong. The Trump administration then attacked Weingarten because early in the Covid pandemic, the AFT pushed for safety measures before reopening schools.  It ignored her research and recommendations, and claimed that Weingarten “is the last person who should be weighing in about what is best for American students.”

When NewsMax interviewed Linda McMahon after Weingarten’s presentation, McMahon first criticized Weingarten for closing schools during the Covid pandemic (although the truth was that she proposed science-based protections to facilitate safe school openings.) Then, McMahon effusively praised AI in classrooms. Then the discussion returned to condemning unions for suposedly placing the good of teachers over that of students.

And Weingarten’s speech on AI was also condemned as a part of an AFT policy that “lines up perfectly with the ‘China First’ agenda.” And the AFT was accused on Substack for “evolving into some type of content-policing organization.”

But, getting back to Weingarten’s speech, NBC reported that she called for blocking most students from using computers in class until they reach third grade, and controlling Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs that are designed to act like real people. She would thus prohibit “student-facing AI in elementary schools” and ban “social companion (chatbots) until age 16.”

Weingarten further explained, “I’m  wary of the dangers of AI, but it is here to stay.” 

NBC News also reported that Weingarten proposed an “independent research consortium to study the effects of AI and screens on student learning.” She explained, “I am not calling for an AI ban or a Chromebook bonfire,” … “What I am calling for is getting the balance right to harness the benefits of technology while mitigating the harm.”

NBC further explained that “some states recently began limiting school-issued devices for the youngest students, and a handful of school districts crafted policies this year to scale back technology in the classroom.” But, “many states and districts are also rushing to require AI literacy education for students, and AI in schools is rising.”

That reporting connects with Dana Goldstein’s recent reporting that “across the educational landscape, from suburban districts and urban charter schools to community colleges and the Ivy League,” schools are pushing back against misuse of A.I. Unfortunately, though, “schools serving low-income students … are often under the most pressure to show that they are embracing innovative technology and preparing students for the working world, where it may soon be standard to rely on generative AI.”

Weingarten’s narrative was also consistent with what the Washington Post recently reported, “Most teachers use artificial intelligence, but relatively few — just 18 percent — have received any formal guidance on how to use it.”

Seeking multiple perspectives, Weingarten had recently visited a school where they used Sal Kahn’s AI for teaching. Khan once predicted it would be a “revolution” in learning, but now he acknowledges, “So far, the revolution hasn’t happened,” and AI tutoring “doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

Kahn concluded, “I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

An educator at that school also explained, “there’s been more enthusiasm for the product among administrators than teachers in her school.” Moreover, some of the “most advanced students have taken advantage of AI to learn new topics. But, as far as she can tell, more students are using it to just find answers, which has created a massive headache for teachers.”

Weingarten  also drew on research funded by the AFT, and supported by Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI showing that:

Critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

And Weingarten challenged a number of Democrats, saying that “too many want to resurrect the failures of high-stakes testing, [and] are pushing privatization.” 

After following the AFT’s footnotes, learning from the evidence Weingarten drew upon, and the insights she gained from educators, I agree with Diane Ravitch, who wrote, “Randi has given many speeches. This is one of her best.” 

I see no way we can deny that AI is dangerous, especially for children, and that we must come together in a nonpartisan way to reduce its harms, while building on its strengths. I see no rationale for seeking simple solutions. And any solutions require listening to a broad spectrum of outlooks.

Regardless of what others see as other causes of the decline of meaningful learning, what sense does it make to attack Weingarten’s efforts to address this rapidly emerging crisis?

I’d argue that today’s attacks make no more sense than the rightwing’s refusal to work with Weingarten’s to build the infrastructure necessary for opening schools during Covid. 

Categories Education Industry, Students, Technology, Trump, Unions

Why LAUSD Chose an Insider as Its New Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
6

The elected board of the Los Angeles Unified School District recently chose Andres Chait, a veteran educator, as its new superintendent, succeeding Alberto Carvalho, who is under investigation in relation to an AI contract.

Chait has served in the LAUSD for nearly three decades. He started as a kindergarten teacher and rose through the ranks. His own children are students in the district.

From my experience, I think this is a wise decision. Many big-city districts went through a long period of disruptive reform, in which they selected inexperienced outsiders to “shake up” and “reform” the district. Most of these disruptions failed, as the outsider fired experienced educators and spent at least one year learning what educators do. Alan Bersin in San Diego, Joel Klein in New York City, and Michelle Rhee in the District of Columbia come to mind, though there were many more. The Broad Superintendent’s Academy was dedicated to churning out such superintendents, indoctrinated in the belief that schools with low scores should be closed, not helped, that state takeovers were a cure, not a harsh and futile measure, that veteran teachers were slackers.

Choosing a respected insider guarantees stability, not disruption.

The Los Angeles Daily News told the story. Open the link to read it.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, California, Education Reform, Los Angeles

White House Criticizes Smithsonian Museum for “Extreme Political Activism”

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
7

A new report was released over the weekend lambasting the Smithsonian Institution for political bias. In its desire to have federal museums teach “patriotic history,” the Trump administration is intent on gaining control of the Smithsonian, cutting its budget, and firing leaders who insist on telling both the good and the bad parts of the nation’s story.

The New York Times tells the story in this gift article, free to you.

In a broadside posted to its website just as Fourth of July fireworks were lighting up skies around the country on Saturday, the White House faulted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to properly celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing that it had become a tool of political activism intent on denigrating the American story.

The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history. It is the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure the Smithsonian into conforming to what President Trump has described as “patriotic” history.

While the report concludes that the Smithsonian Institution — which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo — “has not met its obligations to the American people,” it places particular blame on the National Museum of American History.

That museum has been the subject of “ideological capture,” the report says, accusing it of an anti-white bias and, in particular, of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. Those actions, the report asserts, have “moved the museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

The report, titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” says the museum does not recount U.S. history “clearly and fairly.”

“Our central finding is not that the museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors or broadened its historical scope,” it says. “Rather, it is that museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”

Categories Education Reform

Timothy Snyder: “On Tyranny” and Our 250th Birthday

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
3

Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of Europe. He was a professor at Yale University. Last year, he accepted a professorship and chair at the University of Toronto, because he feared that Trump was taking the U.S. into a fascist future.

He wrote this post for publication today. It includes a video, which you may watch by opening the link.

He writes:

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate a rebellion…

We are told today, by the men who would humiliate us, that America was founded in a spirit of innocence, that its leaders never did anything wrong, and that patriotism means insisting on our own blamelessness and assigning all evil to others. 

If we accept that offer, we not only get history wrong, but we cede our own power to change things for the better. We let the oligarchs steal our money and the fascists rob the greater treasure of our liberty.

If the republic has lasted so long, it is because it was radical in its beginnings. Insofar as it has thrived, it has been through successful and continual struggles against its own limits. 

And that has only been possible because Americans have seen those limits, because they have chosen to see the truth about their history and themselves. I was thinking of self-recognition and self-correction ten years ago when I wrote On Tyranny; today, as a small part of a celebration our two hundred and fifty years, some friends of freedom have joined me to read its lessons aloud.

On Tyranny (the book)

On Tyranny (free resources)

In On Tyranny, I wrote that “the precedent set by the founders demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny.” The truth on which this country was founded is not that people are perfect, but that they are not. They — we — are vulnerable to those who amass wealth and deploy propaganda. We can be turned against one another. Because we are imperfect, said the founders, we place our trust not in any one person — no kings, no tyrants — but in a system of laws, checks and balances, and civic representation by voting that allows us to live in the dignified understanding that power arises from consent.

The rebellion of 1776, in other words, arose from ideas of what was right — “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness“ — but no one thought that those good things could be established once and for all. The point was to create conditions under which we could see, at every moment, the problems that we tend to create ourselves, and under which we could find solutions to those problems. This included — with time, with work, with suffering, with pain borne by some more than others — the ability to see the humanity in one another, to see the horror of slavery for what it was, and to recognize that we all deserve an unhindered voice and an unhindered vote.

On the Fourth of July, 1776, nothing was completed. Something was undertaken, at great peril and risk. The founders did not think of themselves as great men whose faces should be on mountains, as demigods whose stone faces should invite us to submit to future tyrants. When, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, they pledged to one another “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” it was in a cause that they believed was right, but it was also in a cause that was difficult, even desperate.

After victory in the Revolutionary War, the founders debated how to found a republic, conscious of the failures of liberty in history. They knew from the ancient Greeks that oligarchies — rule by a few wealthy men — easily coalesce. They understood from the Roman Stoics that freedom requires a self-discipline that defied the immediate circumstances. They saw from the failed republics of their own times that wealth easily captures institutions. And so in a second moment of insight, they added a Constitution to the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, those who lead our official celebration today represent every threat to liberty that the founders named: arbitrary rule; indifference to law; undue accumulation of wealth; corruption of the government to attain that wealth; collusion with foreign powers to attain power. And we confront a spirit that is contrary to freedom, one that tells us that we should trade a history of freedom for the smoke of fireworks and a face mirrored on a mountain. The past is being used to tell us that we have no choice but to accept the present.

As Frederick Douglass reminds us, in a great speech on another Fourth of July, “the cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers.” That is, sadly, exactly what is happening today. That is the essence of today’s official commemoration. As he understood, the founders, though wrong about many things, were rebels in their own time, people who took risks. To celebrate them justly is not to wish that the past return, or to worship them as flawless, or least of all to accept the aspiring tyrant who is undoing the best of their work.

To celebrate a rebellion means not to obey in advance, not to accept any of this as normal: not the lies told about the history by the people destroying our future, not the saccharine veneration of the Constitution by people who violate it every day, not the seizure of the mantle of revolution by a band of reactionary oligarchs. It is to be as courageous as you can: to speak the truth, to protect the elections we still have, and above all to organize in a great a joyful coalition.

History is not something that our oligarchs and fascists can take, try though they will today. History is what we make. It does not come to us. We come to it — with what we know, what we say, and what we do. Nothing in history dooms us; and nothing in history saves us. In the months between now and the next elections, there will be much forecasting, speculating, and worrying. None of that matters. All that matters is organizing a great and joyful coalition.

All that matters is the work. If my words are useful, if the beautiful reading here of my words is useful, it is only because those words bring you to act.

To celebrate a rebellion is to know that, from a flawed world, we can make new things. We can hold on, we can find each other, and not just imagine but create a much better America.

PS: The lessons: (1) Do not obey in advance; (2) Defend institutions; (3) Beware the one-party state; (4) Take responsibility for the face of the world; (5) Remember professional ethics; (6) Be wary of paramilitaries; (7) Be reflective if you must be armed; (8) Stand out; (9) Be kind to our language; (10) Believe in truth; (11) Investigate; (12) Make eye contact and small talk; (13) Practice corporeal politics; (14) Establish a private life; (15) Contribute to good causes; (16) Learn from peers in other countries; (17) Listen for dangerous words; (18) Be calm when the unthinkable arrives; (19) Be a patriot; (20) Be as courageous as you can.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump, Tyranny

J. Michael Luttig: How to Save Our Nation and the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
5

On June 22, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a greatly revered Appeals Court Judge, delivered these remarks to the Election Integrity Summit of the Cleveland Municipal Bar Association and the Task Force for American Democracy in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his conservative credentials, he has been one of the most critical voices raised against Trump since January 6, 2021. His resistance to tyranny makes you wonder why most other conservatives have not spoken out on behalf of the rule of law.

He said:

Thus it is that in less than two weeks, on July 4, 2026, we will celebrate the birth of the greatest nation on earth, the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world.

In 1787, after the Revolutionary War to secure our independence from the tyrannical King George III, “We the People of the United States . . . ordain[ed] and establish[ed] the Constitution of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union.” The Constitution was ratified and adopted by the States and became the Great Charter for our self-government and the guarantor of our cherished rights and liberties on June 21, 1788.

On July 4, 1776, the American Colonists declared their independence from King George III and the British Crown, two hundred and fifty years ago almost to the day “bringing forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

For the 250 years since its Founding, America has been the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its Democracy, Constitution, and Rule by Law, not by men.

But as we all know, today America is not the same beacon of freedom or the same envy of the world that it has been for a quarter of a millennium.

Today, two hundred and fifty years later, we are again engaged in a great battle “testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Prophetically, these times in which we live on the 250th Anniversary of this nation’s Founding are — once again – the times that try men’s souls.

As we celebrate our Founding today, the question for “We the People” of America is whether we are willing to do the sacred work necessary to return our country to its deserved place as the beacon of freedom and envy of the world, whether we are willing to do the hard, but sacred, work necessary to ensure that America will long endure.

As we struggle to decide what we ourselves want for America and what we want our America to be – and not to be – the entire world is anxiously awaiting our answer, more anxiously awaiting our answer today than it awaited our answer a quarter of a millennium ago.

Two hundred and fifty years into the greatest experiment in self-government in human history, the time of America’s testing has finally come.

The Founders of this great nation feared these times in America.

In this 250th Anniversary year, America’s institutions of government and governance and its institutions of democracy and of law are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack – from within.

At this point, five and a half years since January 6, 2021, the 47th President of the United States has all but wrought the complete inversion of our nation’s positive law — the Constitution and laws of the United States – our moral law that has been passed down to us through the ages, and even our biblical law as found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, including The Ten Commandments.

But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain . . . Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.

For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).

Speaking in a time of similar moral and legal upheaval in America nearly two centuries ago, a 29-year-old state legislator, who would later become the 16th President of the United States, urged a revival to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, a renewed reverence for that Great Charter for our governance and guarantor of our liberty and our freedoms.

“Let reverence for the laws,” the young Abraham Lincoln implored, “be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap — let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. . . .”

“[I]n short,” Lincoln sermonized with the reverence he urged, let the Constitution and the Rule of Law “become the political religion of the nation.”

Today, America is in desperate need of such a revival to our Constitution and Rule of Law as our 16th President urged upon the nation in 1838 – a reawakening and quickening to the reverential imperatives of the Constitution from which we have strayed so very far.

Winston Churchill said that “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because . . . courage is the quality which guarantees all others.”

We Americans must summon the courage that has eluded us in our all-consuming fear over the past decade of years. We must summon from deep within the courage that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor” to secure their — and our — liberty and freedom.

With the united support of a hopeful world, we Americans must overcome our fear. We must find our voices again.

We must finally – finally – rise to our feet, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are witnessing in America today.

After all, ours is a nation founded upon dissent and protest.

America’s protest against the British Empire 250 years ago is the single greatest protest in all of history – a revolutionary protest and dissent from the tyranny and oppression of King George III.

Until now, we Americans have never hesitated to support, defend, and protect our cherished liberties, our freedoms, and our fundamental constitutional rights from governmental tyranny, whether it be from abroad or from at home.

Why are we hesitating now? Why are we silent now, at the very time of America’s testing, on this 250th Anniversary of America’s birth? Why have we Americans chosen to remain silent or why have we allowed ourselves to be silenced and betray, in this fateful year of years?

Why have we suddenly lost our voices, two and a half centuries since we were gloriously given our voices by the Constitution of the United States?
I will tell you. We have lost our voices because of fear. Fear of ridicule, fear of political reprisal. Fear of political persecution. Fear of personal persecution. Even fear of prosecution. In far too many cases, fear for our lives and livelihoods.

Fear of the known and fear of the unknown, the unknown as to when this all ends and how.
We can be forgiven for our fear, but we will never be forgiven for our cowardice in the face of our fear.

The Founders of this great country did not cower in their fear, and unlike us, they had reason to fear. When the men who founded the greatest nation on earth first came face to face with fear, “they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.” They stared down their fear and defeated fear itself.

There is no excuse or defense for the cowardice that is inflicting America today, especially the cowardice that has consumed our political leaders. Nor is there forgiveness awaiting those who have cowered or been cowered, least of all those we have elected to represent us and our country.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hauntingly warned that “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
We should pray that we will not be remembered for our cowardice and our cowered silence in these times when America needed us most.

If we are to be victorious over the evil that is warring for the heart and soul of America today, it is going to take the courage of the armies of God and the moral clarity of the collective voices of “We the People.” It is we who “ordained and established” this Constitution” “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Ours is the righteous war, not theirs.

America is calling and we must answer.

If we answer and but find the courage to speak our powerful truth to our government’s powerless untruth now — today, not tomorrow — as did the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the United States of America will soon again be the envy of the world and it will endure forever as the beacon of freedom and liberty to the world.

Once we have finished the righteous and noble task at hand, we must then finish the great task that yet lies ahead of us 250 years since our Founding.

But “[t]he dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew,” as Abraham Lincoln exhorted the nation in 1862.

So then, this must it be in this 250th Anniversary year. We Americans must think anew and act anew. We must re-found America again. We must reacquaint ourselves with the truths that we once believed were self-evident – and still are. We must reawaken ourselves to the ideals, the beliefs, the principles, the values, and the truths upon which America was founded and has flourished for two and a half centuries – and reexamine these foundational truths, beliefs, and principles, if need be.

We must build anew the hopes and the dreams upon which this country was founded, the hopes and dreams that have inspired us and bound us together into the more perfect union that “We the People” ordained and established, the hopes and dreams that have made America the greatest nation on earth.

We must “turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it,” as Abraham Lincoln once urged.

We must shore up and reinforce the bulwark of our faltering democracy and Rule of Law and refortify the institutions of our law and democracy. “Preserving virtuous institutions is its own noble purpose,” David French put it so well.

And as we refortify and restrengthen our sacred institutions of law and democracy, we need to inspire among our citizenry a reverential revival to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law. Above all else, America is “[a] government of laws, and not of men.” We are desperately in need of a revival, a revival that will renew and revitalize the flagging faith of the American People in our Constitution and Rule of Law, the organic law of our ordered liberty.

We have no other choice than to pass the test laid down for us by our ancestors, to ensure that this “nation so conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal will long endure.”

And when this storm has passed, we must promise ourselves and the generations that follow that we will never again take our Democracy and our Constitution for granted. We must learn from these tumultuous times – never to forget – that our Democracy and Rule of Law are fragile and can be wrested from us in an instant, even by those among us, if we are not ever-vigilant.

Almost two centuries ago, that same young man of mere twenty-nine years who would one day become President of the United States foretold of the “danger” “from within” that is preying on America today. Listen to Abraham Lincoln’s prescient and ominous warning.

We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . .

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.[6]

What, then, must we Americans do today, if we are to bequeath this “political edifice of liberty and equal rights” to our descendants, this legacy that was bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?

I will tell you. We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours only, to transmit this ‘goodly land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”

We in the profession of law belong to one of the most honorable and honored, the most noble and nobilified, and the most venerable and venerated of professions.

Of our Founding Fathers, 35 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were lawyers or had legal training. Of the Framers of our Constitution, 32 of the 55 were lawyers. Of the “Committee of Five” tasked by the Continental Congress with writing the Declaration of Independence, 4 were lawyers.

We in the legal profession are the guardians and stewards of the Constitution and the Rule of Law, the foundations of our democratic nation and the guarantors of our liberty.

We lawyers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
We are uniquely qualified, positioned, and obligated to defend our Constitution, our Rule of Law, and our democracy – and we must do so today, tomorrow, and the next day, until the present existential threat is no longer.

Thereafter, at long last finally understanding their fragility, we must forever protect and preserve the Constitution and America’s Democracy, as we are obligated by oath to do.
If this sounds as if the lawyer holds a special place in the constitutional order that is our democracy and that we are weighted by an almost-sacred responsibility, it is because we do, and we are.

We have a high appointment, and we have a high charge.

There comes a time in every single one of our lives – whether that life be private or public – when we are summoned to attest to our beliefs and convictions, when we are summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm what we believe and what we do not believe.

This moment of truth and decision is our moment of calling. And the decision that we must make in that moment always comes at personal cost.

When our call comes, if we answer with the courage of our convictions, we are heroes, whether we be heroes just to ourselves, to our families, our friends, our loved ones, our communities – or heroes to our country.
We call those in public life and in public service heroes who, when summoned, stand, affirm, and act to preserve and protect all that we cherish and hold dear in America.

We honor these men and women as heroes because when their time comes and they are summoned, they rise, they speak, and they act – without having to decide whether to do so. For them, there is no decision to be made, for they made their decision long before.

When their time comes, these heroes stare down fear, often profound fear – already knowing what they must do and what their sacrifice might be.
We bear witness to, and we affirm, the heroism of these heroes in order that heroism will be forever encouraged in a world in which there are vanishingly few with the strength, the will, and the courage to speak and act when they are called upon — that is, in a world where there are fewer and fewer heroes.

Members of the noble profession of law, our moment of calling has come.

We here today are being summoned, as are all Americans – to stand, bear witness, and affirm that we believe in America, that we believe in our Constitution and our Rule of Law, and that we believe in our Democracy.

You, and we, as members of the venerated profession of law are being summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm again that we will honor the oath we took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We must challenge and entreat each other today to commit and re-commit ourselves to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law, to pledge ourselves to these and to their protection and preservation.

We must vow today that it will be the Rule of Law that triumphs over politics and not politics that triumphs over the Rule of Law.

If we succeed in this, our sacred obligation to our country, we will have risen to what is our high calling to ensure that America long endures as a nation of laws, not of men. We will be heroes for the Constitution and the Rule of Law in America…

Friends, our task is righteous and our task is noble. Our struggle is not only for today, but also for our vast future, Abraham Lincoln reminded us. And the hour is late.


Godspeed America.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History

Frank Sinatra: “The House I Live In”

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
2

This short film was shown to me and my classmates in 1950 to encourage racial and religious tolerance. This is the Library of Congress version.

There is a slightly longer version that begins with Sinatra rehearsing a song in a sound studio. He takes a break, steps outside, and finds a bunch of kids picking on a Jewish boy. He stops the fight and sings this song.

The song was written by Abel Meeropol, who also wrote “Strange Fruit,” a powerful song about lynching, recorded by Billie Holiday.

A teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City, Meeropol and his wife had a strong sense of outrage about racism. They were blacklisted because of their membership in the Communist Party. They eventually quit the party. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested, convicted and executed, the Meeropols adopted their two young sons.

Categories Education Reform
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