Viktor Orban’s Best Friends: Trump and Putin

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
1

A very important election takes place on Sunday. Hungarians will vote whether to keep Viktor Orban or to replace him with Peter Magyar, leader of the center-right party Tisza. The latest polls show Magyar leading Orban’s Fidesz party. The election is close, and there are many undecided voters.

Orban is a favorite of Trump and his MAGA base. He is also admired by Putin because he has been a disruptive force within NATO, blocking aid for Ukraine. Orban has fascist tendencies: he has clamped down of freedom of the press and expressed hostility to immigrants. He has a special hatred for gays.

JD Vance visited Hungary this week to convert support for Orban’s “illiberal democracy.”

In this post in The American Prospect, editor-at-large Harold Meyerson describes what is at stake in Sunday’s election in Hungary.

The friends of Viktor Orbán

Trump and Putin, Bibi and Tucker Carlson, thug-ocrats of all nations flock to Orbán’s banner.

If you wanted to find some way to cluster in a single room the individuals who pose a genuine threat to liberal freedoms, egalitarian values, and scientific epistemology, you might want to call a meeting of the Viktor Orbán fan club. There, Donald Trump would rub elbows with Vladimir Putin, JD Vance with Xi Jinping, Tucker Carlson with—yes—Bibi Netanyahu. Orbán, whose longtime rule over Hungary is threatened by Sunday’s election there, is uniquely positioned at the center of a set of overlapping Venn diagrams representing every xenophobic, obscurantist, homophobic, ethno-nationalist, and anti-democratic thug either currently in power or maneuvering to get there.

Right now, the two major players working to save Orbán from defeat on Sunday are Trump and Putin. Ukraine, Schmukraine: Both see in Orbán a fellow immigrant-hater, who, like them, has walled off his borders, seized control of his nation’s judiciary, created (through the miracle of kleptocracy) a new oligarchic elite devoted to bolstering his rule, taken control of the news media (both public and private), turned education into indoctrination, banished an entire university endowed by George Soros (whose legacy includes bringing down Putin’s beloved USSR and backing anti-Trump candidates and initiatives), served as Putin and Trump’s inside operator to undermine the European Union, mobilized homophobia when it’s been politically useful, and done his damnedest to curtail freedom of speech. Is it any wonder that Putin’s agents have tried to rig the upcoming election in his favor, or that MAGA culture warriors have rushed to bolster his cause because he’s demonstrated that even partial authoritarianism can impede the woke and exile the empiricists? Is it any wonder that Vance was stumping for him in Budapest last weekend as a way to solidify his own support from the American MAGAnauts whose affection he needs to rekindle? Is it any wonder that Trump himself has endorsed Orbán, or that Putin sees him as his man inside the EU?

Idolizing Orbán is also the common thread linking Tucker Carlson, who probably has done more to promote Orbán to MAGA conservatives than anyone else, and Bibi Netanyahu, who sent a message last month to the MAGA faithful attending their annual CPAC conference in Budapest, hailing Orbán as a leader who can “protect against this rising tide” of Islamic terrorism. “Viktor Orbán,” he added, “means safety, security, stability.” If that didn’t suffice, Yair Netanyahu, Bibi’s son, traveledto that Budapest conference to echo his father’s endorsement.

Orbán has emerged as a kind of Jeffrey Epstein of geopolitics. Just as Epstein managed to assemble a mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of sex with underaged girls, so Orbán has also brought together an equivalently mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of ethno-nationalistic anti-liberalism—a cause, clearly, that can unite communists and capitalists, Jews and antisemites.


The Trump-Orbán lovefest is nothing new. Orbán has endorsed Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns, and last October, Trump rewarded him by exempting Hungary from the sanctions his administration has placed on nations buying Russian oil and gas. Trump later made clear that this agreement was specifically between him and Orbán; were Orbán not re-elected (the most recent polls show him trailing his opponent by roughly ten percentage points), Trump made clear there was no guarantee that he would continue to honor it.

But Orbán’s ties to America’s Christian nationalists go beyond Trump’s “what’s in it for me?” ethos. When a number of Hungary’s European neighbors were welcoming Muslim refugees a decade ago, Orbán built barricades on the borders and made clear that Muslims were not welcome. While endorsing Orbán during his drop-in to Budapest, Vance said he’d come there “because of the moral cooperation between our two countries,” that each was engaged in a “defense of Western civilization” based on their common adherence to “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

As even the most cursory course in Hungarian history can make clear, one of the nation’s defining Christian values has long been antisemitism. Imagine the kind of 20th-century Silicon Valley that Hungary could have cultivated had it not compelled such Jewish scientific and mathematical geniuses as John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, and Theodore von Kármán to leave their homeland in their late teens or early twenties. Imagine how many more Hungarian Jews would have survived the Holocaust had Hungarian Christians not been steeped in antisemitism well before the Gestapo arrived.

“Will you stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers?” Vance concluded. “Then, my friends, go to the polls and stand for Viktor Orbán.”

But, hey: If Bibi is willing to overlook such incidents, who am I to cavil?

Of course, there have always been lots of Hungarians who never cottoned to Orbán, the God of their fathers notwithstanding. Like most big, cosmopolitan cities, Budapest has been a bastion of anti-Orbán sentiment, favorably disposed to the arts and sciences; his support, like that of most Christian nationalist leaders, is disproportionately rural and parochial. But the redistribution of Hungarian wealth and income to the oligarch class that Orbán has created has apparently taken a political toll even among some longtime Orbánistas—much as its American equivalent seems to be taking a political toll on Republicans here in the States.

JD Vance was right: Illiberal kleptocratic Christian nationalism is on the ballot in Hungary this Sunday, just as it will be on the ballots that Americans will cast in November. Here and there, may it be massively repudiated.


Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, International

Should White House Press Invite Enemies of a Free Press to Their Dinner?

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
10

Natalie Korach of Status questions whether the press should invite enemies of a free press to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Status is an unusually perspicacious source of insider talk about the communications industry.

Korach writes:

As the Trump administration wages war on the press, news outlets hosting White House Correspondents’ Dinner events are dodging questions about who’s on their guest lists. 

When Donald Trump revealed last month that he would attend this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the first time as president, the announcement prompted immediate blowback. After years of vilifying the press, the decision by the White House Correspondents’ Association to welcome Trump as a guest of honor struck many as an extraordinary act of appeasement. 

Yet little attention has been paid to the nation’s biggest news organizations who play host to the weekend’s marquee gatherings. But as invitations for the weekend’s festivities started to circulate this week, it raised the question of whether newsrooms plan to welcome members of an administration that has spent more than a year publicly waging war against them. 

Status reached out to the handful of major outlets hosting WHCD-adjacent events to ask whether they planned to invite members of the administration to sip cocktails and snack on hors d’oeuvres at their respective events. Will officials like Karoline Leavitt and Stephen Miller—who regularly launch vicious assaults on the press—be welcomed with open arms at gatherings ostensibly aimed at celebrating the First Amendment and standing up to those who would chip away at it? 

Representatives for ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, MS NOW, NBC News, and POLITICO all declined to comment when asked whether they will play host to members of the administration—perhaps tellingly so. 

That reticence is hardly surprising. When Status reported earlier this week that many attendees plan to don First Amendment-supporting accessories to this year’s dinner, some derided the symbolic action as a weak response to the near-daily assaults unleashed by Trump against reporters and news organizations. 

“It’s entirely hypocritical to invite administration officials who consistently attack the media,” one former network executive told Status, calling it “absurd.” 

The situation is no doubt an uncomfortable one for news organizations, which have not had to seriously grapple with the issue before. During Trump’s first term, the White House largely stayed away from the correspondents’ dinner and surrounding festivities, sparing outlets from their events becoming defined by officials who were simultaneously attacking them. That followed conservative blowback in 2018 when the night’s entertainment, comic Michelle Wolf, roasted then-Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, comparing her to Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and quipping, “She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye.” 

With Trump planning to attend this year, it is far more likely that administration officials will make the rounds. Executives are now tasked with deciding whether inviting Trump officials is simply an extension of long-standing bipartisan tradition or an act that risks normalizing an administration that has repeatedly sought to undermine the press and stepped far outside the bounds of accepted behavior. 

Still, there are early indications of how at least some networks are approaching the weekend. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for instance, could make an appearance at the CBS News–POLITICO pre-dinner reception, Status has learned. That’s because Hegseth has been invited by the network to attend the dinner itself, according to a person familiar with the plans, as first reported by Breaker. New CBS News Editor in-Chief Bari Weiss also plans to attend, the person said, who noted that the network has historically invited the full cabinet and administration officials to the dinner. This year’s invitations, the person said, were extended to elected leaders from both parties, with an expectation that Democrats would attend as well. 

Even so, the Hegseth invitation didn’t sit well with some. “What a slap in the face to the journalists at CBS News to invite the man leading the fight to unilaterally shut down press freedoms in this country,” an executive from a rival network told Status. “Nothing says celebrating press freedoms like the man who won’t even let photographers in the room for fear they’d miss his good side!” 

The decision to invite Hegseth is particularly stark after the former Fox News weekend host booted journalists from the Pentagon and used press briefings to discuss the U.S. war on Iran to deride reporters. One CBS News staffer called it “deeply disappointing” that the Weiss-led outlet would invite Hegseth as a guest, while another told Status it felt like an “access play,” at the expense of the network’s journalists. 

Other networks seem to be approaching the weekend in a similar manner. A person familiar with CNN’s planning said that the network doesn’t take “different approaches” to its guest list “based on who is in office,” adding that extending bipartisan invites is standard practice. “If they choose to accept this year when they’ve boycotted before, that’s their decision, but it’s not a new approach,” the person said. 

Likewise, a person familiar with NBCUniversal’splans for the weekend said that, as in years past, NBC News has extended invitations broadly to both Democrats and Republicans, including members of the current administration.  

It goes without saying, however, that the Trump administration is not just another Republican administration. It’s not politics as usual in Washington, though it seems clear some news executives prefer it were. Trump and the top officials in his government have shattered norms and taken unprecedented measures to chill speech and demonize the press. While news executives might conveniently position their decisions as simply following decades-long norms, Trump has had no problem shredding them. It raises the question: If Trump is willing to trash longstanding traditions, why are news executives so beholden to them? 

In any event, some newsrooms are signaling a more pointed posture. 

While a spokesperson for MS NOW declined to detail the guest list, invitations to the network’s first standalone correspondents’ dinner event since its split from NBCUniversal have adopted a distinctly values-driven tone, emphasizing that “a free press and the journalists who power it are essential to the future of democracy,” as MS NOW’s afterparty invitation reads. (Full disclosure: Status is also hosting an event and has chosen not to invite or grant admission to administration officials, given their ongoing attacks on the press.) 

HuffPost has also outright said that it is taking a principled stand against mingling over champagne and canapés with Trump administration officials who have derided, mocked, and insulted the press corps, choosing not to attend the dinner this year, a departure for the BuzzFeed-owned digital outlet. 

“HuffPost refuses to celebrate journalism and laugh alongside an administration and president that regularly attacks the free press, weaponized the FCC, and threatened to jail journalists,” a person familiar with the decision told Status. Instead of having a presence at the dinner, the progressive outlet will focus on “rigorously covering the White House and holding power to account and covering any developments on April 25th,” the person added. 

During his second term, Trump has taken his threats against the media to a new level, barring outlets from events and stripping the White House Correspondents’ Association of its traditional authority over the press pool. Trump has stripped funding for public media and moved to shut down Voice of America under Kari Lake’s leadership. Meanwhile, the White House has sued numerous news organizations, including ABC News, the BBC, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. 

The dinner, and what comedians like Stephen Colbert, Hasan Minhaj, and Larry Wilmore have joked about from the stage, has long been a source of friction and occasional controversy. Until Trump, though, presidents and officials dutifully attended, weathering the jabs and jokes that went with it. This year, however, the association has invited mentalist Oz Pearlman to headline the evening, signaling a less politically-tinged monologue with Trump in the room. 

But Hegseth and other administration officials making the cut for events celebrating the First Amendment underscores a larger issue. News organizations have long prided themselves on maintaining neutrality. But that posture is being tested in an environment where one side of the political equation has made hostility toward the press a central feature of its governing approach.

Categories Accountability, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Shawgi Tell: The Pace of Crime and Corruption in Charter Schools Continues

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
1

With the rapid spread of vouchers, which are busting the budgets of several states and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, it’s easy to overlook the danger posed by charter schools. Charter schools are a strong step towards vouchers, replacing neighborhood schools with consumerism. Almost 90% of American students attend public schools. We should be funding those schools, not schools operated by private boards and religious groups.

Dr. Shawgi Tell reminds us that charter schools continue to breed corruption and fraud, as they drain resources from public schools. Charter schools are not subject to the same accountability as public schools. They operate under private management, which shields them from the accoubtabilty to which public schools are subject. Without oversight or accountability, bad things happen.

Dr. Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York.

He writes:

Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.

These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.

This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.

A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:

·        Cedar Rapids Prep Charter principal terminated this week as second harassment charge is filed (The Gazette, April 3, 2026).

·        Las Vegas charter school assistant principal arrested on child abuse charges (FOX5, March 23, 2026).

·        L.A. charter school teacher accused of assaulting 6-year-old girl (2UrbanGirls, March 21, 2026).

·        Little Elm charter school teacher arrested for child sex crimes (FOX 4, January 30, 2026).

·        $25M swindled by fraudulent charter school recovered for San Diego K-12 students (City News Service, January 30, 2026).

·        Owner of Newark charter school accused of stealing wages from teachers (NBC Bay Area, January 21, 2026).

·        Former New Orleans charter school may have improperly spent more than $600,000, audit says (NOLA, January 21, 2026).

·        Former Midlands charter school teacher arrested for allegedly assaulting student (WIS, January 14, 2026).

·        North Carolina charter school teacher charged with multiple child sex crimes, including against a student (FOX 8, January 3, 2026).

Do such horrible things happen in traditional public schools and private religious schools? Yes they do, but when looking at scale, scope, frequency,  and proportionality, they are considerably more rampant in charter schools, which are deregulated businesses governed by unelected private persons.

The privatization and marketization of education lends itself to such phenomena on a broad scale. Privatization increases corruption and lowers standards across a broad range of operations, roles, and services. Converting public programs and services into capital-centered programs and services usually enriches a handful of people while harming the public interest in the process. When programs and services focused on uplifting people and society are transformed into profit-maximizing entities, the majority suffers.

See here for more examples of charter school crimes and scandals.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is the author of Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Judge J. Michael Luttig: The Beginning of the End of Trump’s Presidency?

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
20

Judge J. Michael Luttig has always been considered a conservative Republican. He worked in the Reagan administration and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice Warren Burger. In 1991, he was appointed to the Fourth District Court of Appeals by President George H.W. Bush. Luttig resigned his judgeship in 2006 to work as general counsel for Boeing.

Although a stalwart conservative, Luttig was appalled by Trump’s attempt to overturn the election he lost in 2020. He testified to the House January 6 committee that Trump and his allies were “a clear and present danger to American democracy.” In 2023, he co-wrote an article with liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe arguing that Trump should be barred from running for the Presidency because of his role in the 2021 insurrection (Section 3 of the 14th Amendment).

When Trump was leading the field in 2024, Luttig predicted that Trump’s election would be “catastrophic” for the United States, and he subsequently endorsed Kamala Harris.

Luttig has continued to put the Constitution and the rule of law over partisan politics.

Judge Luttig wrote this article on his Substack blog. I reposted about half of it. To read it in full, open the link or subscribe.

Judge Luttig wrote:

On January 11, 2026, with America and the world anxiously watching — and hoping — Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell fearlessly stood up to the President of the United States, and his truth put the lie to Donald Trump.

For their honorable and courageous stands against the President of the United States, Chairman Powell and Judge Boasberg may have earned Donald Trump’s eternal enmity, but they have earned the nation’s and the world’s eternal gratitude.

On that day, Chairman Powell became the first elected or appointed public official to stand in the breach in America’s time of testing and confront the President of the United States, man to man. The first public figure in over five years who Donald Trump has been unable to insult, harass, threaten, or persecute into silence, bludgeon into submission, or politically destroy, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board became the first man to stand up to the wannabe king of the United States.

History will record that Chairman Powell’s courageous televised statement in defiance of the President of the United States marked the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, and history will richly reward Jerome Powell with its favor.

It could just well be that this honorable humble public servant single-handedly saved America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law, if only the others of America’s institutions of government, democracy, and law will finally summon the same courage and follow Jay Powell’s noble and courageous lead before it’s too late.

Jay Powell was always the one man in the world who could stand up to Donald Trump, and Trump knew it, which is why, despite his false bravado, he feared the Reserve Board Chairman. Trump forced the latest confrontation with Jay Powell in one last desperate attempt to force Powell from office so that he could finally seize control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank in the eleventh hour and manipulate the interest rates to disguise the crippling economic impact of his sweeping, unconstitutional global tariffs and his unconstitutional war in Iran.
It turned out to be the worst miscalculation of his life.

Donald Trump considered his years-long effort to fire Powell or force his resignation and to gain control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank to be the decisive showdown of his presidency. His face-off with the Federal Reserve was always to be Donald Trump’s Armageddon in which he victoriously vanquished his archnemesis Jay Powell and took the victor’s spoil of control over the Federal Reserve Bank.

When, not if, he succeeded, his conquest was to be the crowning achievement of his presidency — the conquest that assured the success of his entire presidency, because he would control the monetary policy of the United States and, along with it, interest rates, and thereby the economies of the world, to do with them whatever he pleased.

But Donald Trump’s gloriously imagined victory over Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve Bank was never to be and, like the Greek tragedy that it was, everyone in the world knew it, except Donald Trump.

When the day of the world heavy-weight championship finally arrived, the favored heavy-weight Reserve Board Chairman knocked out the reigning light-weight President of the United States in the opening round. The President was TKO’d in the championship fight of his life by the man he had insulted, tormented, and belittled for years.

Donald Trump had finally crossed the wrong man. It was the demure, universally respected Jay Powell who finally called Trump’s bluff, revealing that the humiliated emperor embarrassingly has no clothes.

Both America and the world had longed for a David to slay America’s Goliath and save the nation and the world from the giant’s tyrannical rampage. On January 11, As he spoke clearly, plainly, and truthfully about his ludicrously corrupt pretextual prosecution by the bully president, the entire world cheered on their new David-hero.

America and the world at last had their longed-for hero in the pitched battle for the heart and soul of America, The Honorable Jerome Powell, the courageous Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

History is written by the victor, Winston Churchill is (mis)reported to have said. On January 11, 2026, Jay Powell wrote the victor’s history of the 47th President of the United States before the would-be victor even got the chance.

It poetically fell to The Honorable James Boasberg to mop up after Donald Trump’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Fed Chairman. Judge Boasberg’s swift and withering judicial confirmation of the president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and Rule of Law officially ratified the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency that Jay Powell had wrought. For his distinguished service to the country and to the Constitution, The Honorable James Boasberg is America’s other Profile in Courage and Hero in the battle for America and its future.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Economy, Evil, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Timothy Snyder: How to Foil a Coup Attempt

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
4

The distinguished historian Timothy Snyder is deeply steeped in European history and in the ways of authoritarians, tyrants, dictators, and others who lust for power. He warns us that the possibility of a coup attempt is real, and we must be prepared. How does he know it’s real? Trump tried to stage a coup on January 6, 2021. He failed then, he suffered no consequences for his effort to overturn the election.

Now Trump knows that he’s facing a Democratic wave against his authoritarianism in November. He is unlikely to accept the voters’ decision. What can we do?

Snyder writes:

We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth are stuck in the logic of escalation, according to which the feeling of defeat today can be reversed by doing the first thing that comes to mind tomorrow. Trump is surrounded by people who are making money from the war; each day of war strengthens a warmongering lobby with personal access to the president. As the war lengthens, the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt increases.

Trump tells us that he is chiefly concerned with the permanence of his own comfort and power (think about ballroom and bunker), much of which he will lose when his party is defeated decisively in the midterms. He regularly declares his intention to meddle in the elections. His party backed a bill which would have turned elections into a sham. Trump wants to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% without any review of what the money is for; this is strategic nonsense, and has to be understood as a payoff for the men who, as he imagines, will help him install a dictatorship. Hegseth is meanwhile purging the highest officer ranks of people of principle.

It is up to us to put two and two together: Trump will seek to exploit the war (or the next one) to alter the elections. We bear responsibility for what comes next.

The eventuality can seem frightening, but Trump’s position is weak. The gambit of turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is complicated and difficult. Its success depends on us. If the possibility of such a coup is not anticipated and the variants of the gambit are not called out as they emerge, he can succeed. He has attempted a coup (or, technically, a self-coup) once, in January 2021 — there is no reason to think that he will not try to do so again.

As always, history can help us to imagine the immediate future. History does not repeat, but it does instruct. We know that war offers at least five kinds of opportunities for aspiring dictators. Let us consider the moves that Trump could make, and how they could be stopped. I offer them as five clear types; in practice, of course, they will be mixed and matched from day to day. But if we have the concepts in advance, we can recognize the threat, and turn any sort of coup attempt against Trump.

We are not spectators of this unfolding drama. We are actors inside every scenario. And “we” means journalists who report, judges who follow the law, servicemen and servicewomen who follow the Constitution, and above all citizens who organize, protest and vote. If we know the coup scripts in advance, we know when to take the stage — and where to take the rage.

So here are the scenarios:

1. The Steady Hand. A war is going on, is the claim here, and so we should not change leadership, regardless of what happens in an election. This stance nicely dodges the questions of whether the war was worth starting in the first place, and whether the people in charge are the best qualified to make war (or peace). The steady hand argument has been used countless times; it was the approach that George W. Bush took against John Kerry in the presidential campaign of 2004. But whereas Bush was using such arguments to win an election, Trump will have to use them to overturn the results of an election that his party loses, most likely by huge margins. Given that Trump’s polling on the war is terrible, he is in a weaker position than Bush was, and would have to do much more. It is unclear why a steady hand would rig elections; and, for that matter, Trump’s conduct during this war has made his hand seem (even) less steady. To rig an election, he needs a tight elite consensus around him; he needs allies who are willing to break the law and the Constitution, risking not only prison time but also historical infamy as people who wanted to end the republic. The war is breaking up that consensus and leading to the firing of some of the likely election riggers. The case for a steady hand that should not be hindered by electoral results should be easy to defeat; but we have to see the logic and work to break the ranks of Trump allies who would follow orders to rig elections. They have to know that they will fail and that when they will bear the consequences for the rest of their lives. The one truly steady hand is that of justice.

2. Bonapartism. In this tactic the aspiring dictator says: I know that you would like democracy at home, and so let us prove our ardor together by fighting a war for democracy abroad. This is meant to allow the tyrant to claim the mantle of democracy even while he undoes it at home. This approach was behind the original Napoleonic wars; it was perfected by Napoleon III in the 1850s as “diplomatic nationality.” Trump, however, is not pretending to care about democracy. He prefers dictators; and among dictators, he prefers Putin more then the rest. Trump’s allies though will make the case that war spreads “the American way” or something of the sort. But such arguments can be easily defeated. Whether by insider trading, political bets, arms dealing or (in Putin’s case) higher oil prices and conveniently dropped sanctions, the people around Trump are making money on this war — they are literally warmongers. What is good in America is bled away in this war; as oligarchs foreign and domestic make billions of dollars, as we are asked to sacrifice everything in exchange for nothing. Trump himself ran for office on an anti-Bonapartist platform: no wars abroad for democracy, spend money instead at home. Instead he is proposing to defund basic domestic services in order to the bribe the armed services with a ridiculous funding increase during a senseless war.

3. Bismarckian Unification. Here the ruler no longer pretends to care about democracy (so far so good for Trump), but speaks about bringing the nation together. This was the great success of Otto von Bismarck in central Europe between 1864 and 1871. Germany before Bismarck was a culture but not a unified state; in the age of nationalism the question was who would succeed in bringing numerous German entities together. By winning three wars (against Denmark, the Habsburgs, and France), the Prussian leader was able to create the conditions for the establishment of a new, united German Reich. Because unification was achieved by force of arms rather than by revolution or elections (as many Germans had hoped in 1848), the new state was a militaristic monarchy from the beginning, with an essentially symbolic parliament. Trump would no doubt like this model; but he has the problem of being unable to win one war, let alone three; also, the war that he is fighting do not address an essential national problem. Instead it seems to be about tearing the American republic apart. Trump’s budget proposal, offered during the war, amounts to this: the wealth of working Americans will be transferred to oligarchs and defense contractors, and the government will no longer provide basic services. It uses war to advance the impoverishment and peonization of everyone but a tiny elite.

4. Fascist Sacrifice. The fascist leader kills enough of his own people in a major campaign so that the survivors begin to accept the worldview: that all is struggle, that enemies are everywhere, that the world is a conspiracy against us, etc. Death on a mass scale becomes a source of meaning, uniting the Führer with his Volk. There is an element of this in Putin’s war in Ukraine, but the classic example is the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The very difficulty of the war after 1941 helped fascist arguments in Germany — Victor Klemperer’s diaries are helpful here — for more than three years. Trump, however, lacks some of the attributes of historical fascism: the historical fascists actually did believe in struggle, which he does not. Trump believes in saying words and then having things handed to him on a silver platter. Fascists always believed in war; Trump converted to war late in life, having become convinced that it was a way to easy “wins” abroad that could be translated into dictatorship at home. Having boasted of winning in Iran dozens of times already, he is in a poor position to call for the large-scale land invasion that would be necessary to trigger huge American casualties and the bloody fascist dialectic of events and sentiments. Even if he did order a land invasion, it would probably not work, either militarily or politically. He has not done any of the ideological spadework; no one, listening to Trump, would think that he believed in a struggle for survival. By 1941, Hitler had already won quick wars in Poland and France, which created a sense among previously doubtful military commanders and civilians that he knew what he was doing, which then opened the way for a second, more ideological, stage of the war. Military commanders are presumably dubious of Trump; in any event, they are being fired by Hegseth at an extraordinary rate during a war. It is in this light, again, that one must understand Trump’s strategically senseless notion that we should increase the military budget right now by nearly 50%: it is meant as a payoff for officers, soldiers, and sailors — people he has openly disrespected his entire life, people whose funerals he treats as an opportunity to sell his own branded merchandise — to assist him in a coup against Americans. That bribe should fail, for many reasons; but it will not fail unless we notice what is happening.

5. Exploitation of Terror. This gambit (or one variant of it) depends on something happening during a war. A foreign enemy carries out an act of terrorist violence against Americans, providing an aspiring dictator with a pretext for a state of emergency and a suspension of elections. Nothing exactly like this has happened in the United States, although we can recall our self-destructive reactions to 9/11. This is Trump’s best hope among all of these scenarios, which is one reason why it might not happen: Iranian leaders must be aware that Trump would seek to exploit such an event. Iranian propaganda certainly involves threats against individual American leaders, but it seems unlikely that they would carry them out. Teheran has more to gain by mocking Pete Hegseth (as in a recent video) than by seeking to assassinate him. (Indeed, given Hegseth’s particular combination of strategic incompetence and Christian nationalism, he must seem like a God-given enemy for the regime in Teheran.)Subscribe

Another possibility is that Iranians do nothing inside US borders, but Trump and his people pretend that they have, or even organize a fake terrorist strike themselves. It is important to understand that such things do happen, and have been done by the people Trump admires the most. Consider the 1999 false flag terrorist attacks in Russia, the bombing of apartment buildings by the Russian secret services, which began a chain of events that allowed Putin to begin his march towards dictatorship. Self-terror is a Putinist strategy, and it worked. This means that it can be presumed to have been considered by Trump, Putin’s client in the White House. Putin is one of the people to whom Trump listens.

But Trump unlike Putin does not come from the secret services, and it is hard to imagine him not botching such an operation (even the Russians had some slips); it is also hard to imagine that Americans ordered to do such a thing would not leak such a plan before it could be realized (it did leak in Russia and was reported before it happened — but it still worked). Even if the false flag attack itself took place, Trump would have to go from self-terror to a state of emergency and some sort of self-invasion to halt the elections. But a self-invasion by whom? ICE is unpopular and untrained. The war has not been run in a way that brings military commanders to trust the president. Again, one has to see Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% as a kind of desperate bribe. There are sound strategic reasons why it is a terrible idea, but there is also a political one.

Elements of these scenarios can be mixed together. Some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet. And so one should be (preemptively, now) skeptical of Trump’s account of any future terrorist attack; we can be sure that, whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship. It is utterly predictable that he will attempt to pass responsibility for any act of terror to his domestic political opponents and discredit or undo elections. We have to think through this chain of events now to make sure that we are ready to block it — and to turn any such attempt against him.

The terrorism scenario should not work. We should consider it in advance, and hold Trump responsible for any horror inside the United States brought about by his mad war. None of the other scenarios should work either, in any combination. Indeed, all of them should only hurt him, if we are attentive and active. But there is no neutral position. We cannot do nothing and expect the republic to make it through. Indeed, Trump’s one chance to succeed, in any of these scenarios, is our own silent collaboration. He can only carry out a coup if we decide to obey in advance: to pretend that wartime pretexts for coups are never used, although history instructs us that they are; and then to offer our surprise to Trump as the unique political resource that can transform his weak position into a strong one.

Trump is weak, but weakness only matters if it is treated as vulnerability and pushed towards defeat. He will try to make his weak position strong, which will expose further vulnerabilities that have to be seen and exploited. All of his policies make him vulnerable; the war in particular makes him vulnerable; and any gambit to exploit that war should make him and his party easy to defeat and discredit his authoritarian movement forever.

A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before, and he makes it very clear that he is thinking about it now. When we think about it now, about how it might take shape, we make it less likely; indeed, we deter it. Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fraud, Trump

Oklahoma: Jewish Families Oppose Public Funding for a Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
0

An organization called the Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation wants to open a virtual Jewish religious charter school in Oklahoma.

The story is not as straightforward as it appears.

Behind the Florida-based Ben Gamla charter chain is a for-profit management company called Academica, which derives huge annual profits from its connection to more than 200 charter schools across the nation.

There are fewer than 9,000 Jews in the state of Oklahoma, and they are not clamoring for a Jewish charter school.

The state charter board twice rejected the Ben Gamla application, because a previous appeal for a Catholic online charter school was turned down by Oklahoma state courts, then by a 4-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court because Justice Amy Coney Barret recused herself due to her friendship with a lawyer for the religious school.

The Ben Gamla Foundation filed a lawsuit on March 24, claiming that the state law banning public funding for religious schools is unconstitutional religious discrimination.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to strike down Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools, and to order the state to stop denying applicants on the basis of their religious character.

“We’re asking the court to end that blatant religious targeting and allow families to choose schools that are best for them,” Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman in Florida and founder of the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, said in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges that Oklahoma’s requirement that charter schools be “nonsectarian” is unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

But Jewish organizations in Oklahoma are wary of the Ben Gamla application. A small group of Jews and a rabbi in Tulsa recently asked to join a lawsuit to block the Ben Gamla charter school.

The group filed a motion Wednesday in federal court in Oklahoma City seeking to intervene in the lawsuit brought by the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, which is trying to become the nation’s first publicly funded religious school.

Rabbi Daniel Kaiman, the principal rabbi of Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa, says he opposes the mixing of religion and government because of the potential for abuse. His own children attend a public elementary school in Tulsa.

“I am passionate about Jewish education—indeed, I have dedicated my life to it. Kaiman wrote in a declaration filed with the court. “Children in my congregation, including my own children, receive excellent, privately funded Jewish education through our synagogue and at home in accordance with our community values. But the mixing of religion and government creates opportunities for religious coercion…”

The motion was filed on behalf of the seven by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Education Law Center, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed.

The Ben Gamla school would under insert religious teaching into all subjects and require all employees to uphold Jewish values in their lives. What any of that means is unclear. How would math, reading, science, and other subjects be taught from a Jewish perspective. What sort of “values” would employees uphold and who would determine whether they did?

The Ben Gamla application is opposed by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is against religious charter schools. But Drummond leaves office in January and might be replaced by a supporter of religious charter schools.

The state charter school board is pro-charter and is not vigorously opposing the Ben Gamla application. In fact, the state charter board retained First Liberty Institute to represent it. It is a conservative Christian legal group that believes that religious charter schools should be legal.

Oklahoma Jews are opposed to Ben Gamla. The Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City sent a statement to the state Attorney General saying that religious charter schools “risk eroding the constitutional safeguards that protect both religious freedom and government neutrality toward religion.”

Ben Gamla’s financial interdependence on the Academica charter chain should alarm Oklahomans as much as the effort to turn public money over to religious schools.

Academica is a very wealthy for-profit charter management organization.

According to Ben Gamla’s strategic plan, Academica will control its budget and finances, facilities and management, human resources, and much more. And, of course, charge a management fee.

Academica manages more than 200 charter schools in at least 22 states. Its biggest chains are Somerset Academy (at least 80 campuses), Mater Academy (40-50 schools), Doral Academy, and Pinecrest Academy.

Academica held more than $115 million in properties in Florida in 2010 and collected $19 million in profit. That’s 16 years ago, the network has vastly expanded, and no one has updated the total value of Academica’s real estate since then or its annual profits.

Academica makes its hefty profits through management fees and “related party transactions.”

This is how a “related party transaction” works:

A real estate LLC controlled by Academica allies buys or builds a school property. The nonprofit charter school, like Ben Gamla or Mater or Somerset, leases the building. The school collects public funds from the state or the city, then pays rent to the LLC. The rent is high, often as much as 20% of all public funding. The management company chooses the services provided, making contracts with its allies.

The Network for Public Education described Academica in its report on for-profit schools:

Academica: The largest EMO is Academica, based in Miami, Florida. Academica’s owner is a real estate developer, Fernando Zulueta, who opened the first charter, Somerset, as part of a housing development he had constructed. He reasoned that his real estate venture would be more attractive to buyers since students would have a school within the development. Using their real estate companies, Fernando and his brother, Ignacio, built what journalist Jessica Bakeman called “an empire of charter schools.”

Over 100 active corporations linked to Fernando Zulueta and his family members are listed as residing at Academica’s Miami headquarters at 6340 Sunset Drive and 6457 Sunset Drive in Miami.39 They include real estate corporations, holding companies, and finance corporations, as well as sub-chains both within and outside of Florida.

Like many other charter schools and chains, Academica cashed in on the COVID Paycheck Protection Program during the pandemic. Individual schools and other nonprofit and for-profit entities related to the chain received in total up to $35.7 million dollars, even though there is no evidence of revenue lost during the pandemic. In fact, during the pandemic, the EMO continued to expand. In total, charter schools cashed in on one billion dollars from the PPP program.

Mater Academy Foundation, Inc., the related non-profit corporation that oversees Academica’s Mater brand of charter schools, acquired a $127.5 million educational facilities lease revenue bond to purchase several facilities from Academica. The South Florida Business Journal detailed the purchase price of several of the facilities and the Academica-affiliated real estate entities that cashed in on the sales, concluding that “the Pandemic Profiteering deal allows Academica to cash out after investing in the development of charter schools, although it will still earn management fees for the schools.”

The connection between Fernando Zuleta’s real estate holdings and his for-profit managed charter schools goes beyond the state of Florida. According to the State Public Charter School Authority, Academica Nevada pays the lease on behalf of the charter school Mater Academy Mountain Vista of Nevada to Stephanie Development LLC. The managingmembers of Stephanie Development are Fernando and Ignacio Zulueta and Robert and Clayton Howell. Robert Howell is the manager of Academica Nevada.

About 18% of all charter students are enrolled in for-profit charter schools, like those of Academica. If Ben Gamla is approved in Oklahoma, that will open new horizons for their expansion.

Be sure to read NPE’s report:

For-Profit Charter Schools Gone Wild—Proof That Greed and Education Don’t Mix

https://share.google/KgVigiNsDfKzQa0AD

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Oklahoma, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

A Wonderful Conversation for You

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
15

Two brilliant women–Jennifer Rubin of The Contrarian and Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor–talk about the current state of American politics. It’s way better than what you see on TV talk shows. Watch. You will be glad you did.

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/coffee-with-contrarians-and-joyce-daf

Categories Democracy, Trump

Anne Applebaum: Does Trump Know What He is Doing?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2026 //
10

Writing in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum questions Trump’s ability to think through his decisions. Is he acting on a whim, an impulse? Does he remember today what he said the day before?

She writes:

Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.

He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.

For the past 14 months, few foreign leaders have been able to acknowledge that someone without any strategy can actually be president of the United States. Surely, the foreign-policy analysts murmured, Trump thinks beyond the current moment. Surely, foreign statesmen whispered, he adheres to some ideology, some pattern, some plan. Words were thrown around—isolationism, imperialism—in an attempt to place Trump’s actions into a historical context. Solemn articles were written about the supposed significance of Greenland, for example, as if Trump’s interest in the Arctic island were not entirely derived from the fact that it looks very large on a Mercator projection.

This week, something broke. Maybe Trump does not understand the link between the past and the present, but other people do. They can see that, as a result of decisions that Trump made but cannot explain, the Strait of Hormuz is blocked by Iranian mines and drones. They can see oil prices rising around the world and they understand that it is difficult and dangerous for the U.S. Navy to solve this problem. They can also hear the president lashing out, as he has done so many times before, trying to get other people to take responsibility, threatening them if they don’t.

NATO faces a “very bad” future if it doesn’t help clear the strait, Trump told the Financial Times, apparently forgetting that the United States founded the organization and has led it since its creation in 1949. He has also said he is not asking but ordering seven countries to help. He did not specify which ones. “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington. “It’s the place from which they get their energy.” Actually it isn’t their territory, and it’s his fault that their energy is blocked.

But in Trump’s mind, these threats are justified: He has a problem right now, so he wants other countries to solve it. He doesn’t seem to remember or care what he said to their leaders last month or last year, nor does he know how his previous decisions shaped public opinion in their countries or harmed their interests. But they remember, they care, and they know.

Specifically, they remember that for 14 months, the American president has tariffed them, mocked their security concerns, and repeatedly insulted them. As long ago as January 2020, Trump toldseveral European officials that “if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.” In February 2025, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he had no right to expect support either, because “you don’t have any cards.” Trump ridiculed Canada as the “51st state” and referred to both the present and previous Canadian prime ministers as “governor.” He claimed, incorrectly, that allied troops in Afghanistan “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” causing huge offense to the families of soldiers who died fighting after NATO invoked Article 5 of the organization’s treaty, on behalf of the United States, the only time it has done so. He called the British “our once-great ally,” after they refused to participate in the initial assault on Iran; when they discussed sending some aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf conflict earlier this month, he ridiculed the idea on social media: “We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”

At times, the ugly talk changed into something worse. Before his second inauguration, Trump began hinting that he wouldn’t rule out using force to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark, a close NATO ally. At first this seemed like a troll or a joke; by January 2026, his public and private comments persuaded the Danes to prepare for an American invasion. Danish leaders had to think about whether their military would shoot down American planes, kill American soldiers, and be killed by them, an exercise so wrenching that some still haven’t recovered. In Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I was shown a Danish app that tells users which products are American, so that they know not to buy them. At the time it was the most popular app in the country.

The economic damage is no troll either. Over the course of 2025, Trump placed tariffs on Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea, often randomly—or again, whimsically—and with no thought to the impact. He raised tariffs on Switzerland because he didn’t like the Swiss president, then lowered them after a Swiss business delegation brought him presents, including a gold bar and a Rolex watch. He threatened to place 100 percent tariffs on Canada should Canada dare to make a trading agreement with China. Unbothered by possible conflicts of interest, he conducted trade negotiations with Vietnam, even as his son Eric Trump was breaking ground on a $1.5 billion golf-course deal in that country.

Europeans might have tolerated the invective and even the trade damage had it not been for the real threat that Trump now poses to their security. Over the course of 14 months, he has, despite talking of peace, encouraged Russian aggression. He stopped sending military and financial aid to Ukraine, thereby giving Vladimir Putin renewed hope of victory. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, began openly negotiating business deals between the United States and Russia, although the war has not ended and the Russians have never agreed to a cease-fire. Witkoff presents himself to European leaders as a neutral figure, somewhere between NATO and Russia—as if, again, the United States were not the founder and leader of NATO, and as if European security were of no special concern to Americans. Trump himself continues to lash out at Zelensky and to lie about American support for Ukraine, which he repeatedly describes as worth $300 billion or more. The real number is closer to $50 billion, over three years. At current rates, Trump will spend that much in three months in the Middle East, in the course of starting a war rather than trying to stop one.

The result: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has declared that Canada will not participate in the “offensive operations of Israel and the U.S., and it never will.” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius says, “This is not our war, and we didn’t start it.” The Spanish prime minister refused to let the United States use bases for the beginning of the war. The U.K. and France might send some ships to protect their own bases or allies in the Gulf, but neither will send their soldiers or sailors into offensive operations started without their assent.

This isn’t cowardice. It’s a calculation: If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, History, International, Trump

Is the Trump Regime Planning to Restore a Military Draft?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2026 //
4

Jim Bourg, a writer for Reuters for many years., now writes a blog on Substack called Public Impact News.

This is a story that I found ominous. Is Trump planning to revive the military draft? Will he begin drafting young men to fight in Iran? Why? In recent years, we have been told repeatedly that the future of warfare will be high-technology, drones and drone interceptors, not trench warfare.

Note that the report does not mention adding women to the Selective Service registry. Is that because Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, doesn’t want women in the military?

No one has forgotten that Trump ran for office as a “peace candidate,” or that he shamelessly campaigned for a Nobel Peace Prize, or that he created a new entity called the “Board of Peace,” of which he is chairman for life and sole manager of the billions it has already collected from its members.

And yet the “peace president” wants to reinvigorate the Selective Service register. Young people between the ages of 18-26, their parents and grandparents, should ask why.

Bourg reported:

Congress Quietly Approved Automatic Selective Service (Draft) Registration in 2026 Defense Bill

WASHINGTON – (Public Impact News) – In another recent move that has gotten very little coverage or attention, prior to the start of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, the U.S. Congress approved a significant change to the way the United States registers young men (18-26 years old) for potential military conscription, passing a provision in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act that will automatically enroll eligible males into the Selective Service draft system using federal government databases. The change is scheduled to take effect on Dec. 18, 2026.

Under current law, men between the ages of 18 and 26 are required to register with the Selective Service System themselves. Failure to do so can lead to penalties and may make individuals ineligible for certain federal benefits, including student financial aid and government employment.

The provision included in the annual defense policy bill directs federal agencies to share certain identifying information with the Selective Service System so eligible men can be registered automatically. Lawmakers say the goal is to ensure that the registration requirement already on the books is enforced consistently without relying on young people to complete the process manually.

The measure appears in the final compromise version of the NDAA approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump.

Supporters say the change modernizes an outdated administrative system while preserving the existing legal framework.

Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the provision does not expand the government’s authority to draft Americans into military service.

“This does not create a draft and it does not change the underlying requirement that young men register with Selective Service,” Reed said during debate on the bill. “It simply ensures the system works as intended and that eligible individuals are properly registered.”

Some Republicans also supported the change as a practical step to maintain military readiness. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the voluntary registration system has left gaps that could complicate mobilization in a national emergency.

“Ensuring the Selective Service system has accurate and complete records is part of responsible national preparedness,” Cornyn said. “Automatic registration makes the process more reliable and fair.”

The automatic registration proposal was championed in the House by Representative Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer, who argued that the existing system leaves too many eligible men unregistered simply because they are unaware of the legal requirement.

Opponents, however, said the provision was adopted with little public attention and raises concerns about government data sharing and individual privacy. Several lawmakers also questioned the timing of the change as the United States remains engaged in an ongoing war with Iran.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, criticized the provision during debate.
“I do not support quietly expanding the federal government’s reach into personal data to track young Americans for potential military service,” Paul said. “If Congress wants to debate conscription, that debate should happen openly.”

Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, raised similar concerns in the House, warning that the change could create unnecessary anxiety among families at a time of international conflict

“Americans are already worried about escalation in the Middle East,” Massie said. “Implementing automatic draft registration during a war sends the wrong message and risks making people think a draft is coming.”

Defense officials and congressional leaders have emphasized that the policy change does not activate military conscription. A draft would require a separate act of Congress and approval by the president.

The Selective Service System has remained in place since the end of the Vietnam War draft in 1973, maintaining a database of potential recruits in the event Congress authorizes conscription during a national emergency.

Officials say automatic registration is intended to ensure the database remains accurate if it is ever needed. Still, the change has renewed public attention to the Selective Service system, particularly as the United States confronts a widening conflict with Iran. Whether the provision becomes a routine administrative update or the beginning of a broader debate about military service may depend in part on how that conflict develops in the months ahead.

Categories Accountability, International, Trump

A Cellphone-Free Childhood? This Irish Village Is Doing It

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2026 //
4

Parents in the small village of Greystones in Ireland did not like to see their children become addicted to cellphones. So they took action to protect their children. They banned cellphones for young children. The results were rewarding.

Sally McGrane wrote in The New York Times:

Twelve-year-old Bodie Mangan Gisler says a smartphone can be quite handy. For one thing, he collects coins, and if he wants to know how much a special coin is worth or what metals it contains, he can ask his mother for her phone and get the answer.

Most 12-year-olds would demand a phone of their own. Not Bodie. “I want to live long and stay healthy,” he said on a recent afternoon in his school library. But he worries that having a smart device might interfere with that. “Maybe I’ll say to my mum, ‘Can I download this one game?’ And she’ll say, ‘Yeah.’ And I’ll get sucked in.”

His friend Charlie Hess, a fellow coin collector, nods in agreement. He wants to get a smartphone when he’s 15 or 16. Until then, he says “I think I have better things to do.”

The kids are a little different here in Greystones. In 2023, the Irish seaside town just south of Dublin launched a grass-roots initiative led by local parents, school principals and community members to loosen the grip of technology on their younger kids by adopting a voluntary “no smart devices” code and supporting it with workshops and social events.

Three years later, no one in Greystones claims to have cured the ills of modern technology. But they’ve learned that they can’t do anything about it one child at a time. Only a townwide effort could defang the kids’ “everyone else has one” argument.”

“With social media, it’s a collective thing,” said Jennifer Whitmore, a member of Irish parliament and a Greystones mother of four. “Addressing it in a clustered manner is the way to go.”

The movement, called “It Takes a Village,” has since grown well beyond this small town of 22,000 residents. In a country that is home to the European headquarters of tech companies including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and LinkedIn, and where the average firstborn child gets a smartphone at around age 9 (younger siblings tend to get them earlier), the effort has struck a chord with everyone from local shopkeepers to national politicians.

“It was one of the first places that took collective action,” said Daisy Greenwell, who co-founded Britain’s Smartphone Free Childhood movement later the same year — inspired, in part, by Greystones. “It made me think that we could shift the culture here, too.”

Before he held his current position as Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, a Greystones father, helped launch the project. “I believe we are effectively seeing the experimentation with our young people’s mental health and well-being with social media,” said Mr. Harris, in a recent post on Instagram. “And it just can’t be allowed to continue.”

The goal is to give kids time to ease into the digital future rather than drown in it, said Rachel Harper, the principal of St. Patrick’s National School, who spearheads the initiative: “This is the world the children are growing up in, and we need to equip them,” she said.

“It Takes a Village” was conceived as students returned to school after Covid lockdowns. Ms. Harper was struck by how many tears she was seeing at the school gates. She heard similar reports from other primary school principals, teachers and parents: children struggling to sleep, refusing to come to school, downloading calorie-counting apps, or too upset by messages sent the night before to focus in class.

“If we didn’t take a stand now,” she said, “in five years would they be getting phones at 5 or 6?”

Eoghan Cleary, a teacher and assistant principal at Greystones’ Temple Carrig secondary school, had also sounded the alarm. “‘I wish I didn’t have to see any more beheadings’ — that’s what my students say to me the most,” he said. “‘I don’t want to see people being killed. ‘I don’t want to see people being raped online.’”

After some 800 parents responded to a survey sent out by the primary schools — more than half said their children were anxious, and many had sought mental-health assistance — the town decided it was time to act.

“I think it was just so obvious, the damage phones were causing,” said one resident, Ross McParland, who first heard about the schools’ concerns over dinner at Ms. Harper’s house. Mr. McParland, a retired real estate consultant, turned to the Greystones Town Team. Usually responsible for things like Christmas decorations and the St. Patrick’s Day parade, Town Team volunteers were soon focused on the anti-anxiety project.

To kick off the project, Mr. McParland hosted a town hall in the Whale Theater, which he owned. Mr. Harris spoke, as did Stephen Donnelly, then the Irish minister of health and another Greystones father. Two weeks later, all eight primary school principals signed a letter to parents in support of a voluntary code being rolled out by the P.T.A.s. Parents could agree not to buy their kids a smart device before secondary school, which most children start at around age 12.

Seventy percent of parents signed up, and the community united behind the cause.

The founder of a local film festival handled communications. Garrett Harte, a former editor in chief of “Newstalk,” Ireland’s nationwide talk-radio station, helped hone the initiative’s message and delivery. “This was very much, ‘our town needs a little bit of help navigating this new world adults have no clue about,’” Mr. Harte said.

Within a few months, Mr. Donnelly had established a national Online Health Taskforce, while Ireland’s Department of Education issued guidelines for other primary-school communities that wished to follow Greystones model.

With its tradition of volunteerism and charity work, the tight-knit town was well positioned for this kind of experiment. It has a vibrant youth sports scene, and tweens can socialize face to face at the Youth Café, an after-school hangout. On Church Road, the old-fashioned main street, most of the stores are run by locals like Paddy Holohan, who recently sent a note to schools saying that children who need help — say, locating a parent — can always come to his SuperValu grocery store.

“It was just reassurance for parents, as the evenings were getting darker,” said Mr. Holohan, a Greystones father whose children also were not allowed smartphones in primary school. “Everything doesn’t have to be online.”

These days, Greystones parents still face the familiar torrent of technology delivered to kids who know how to change their birth date by a few years to evade age restrictions. According to a 2025 study by CyberSafeKids, an online-safety group, 28 percent of Irish children between the ages of 8 and 12 experienced content or unsolicited contact that “bothered” them, including exposure to horror, violence, sexual material and threats; 63 percent of primary school-aged children said their parents couldn’t see what they’re doing online.

But with workshops for adults and children, podcasts on the topic (like one hosted by local twins Stephen and David Flynn, Greystones dads and lifestyle influencers), and events like a phone-free beach party, Greystones has seen a shift: Parents say the pressure to get their kids a smartphone before the end of primary school has all but vanished. Some say they feel less alone navigating new technological shoals. At St. Patrick’s, one teacher said her students were more alert in the mornings.

Ms. Harper said that children are making plans in person, playing outdoors more, and “just being kids.”

Interest is on the rise. Mr. Cleary, the assistant principal, hosts weekly parent talks, often in communities that want to follow in Greystones’ footsteps. On a recent rainy night at a primary school in Dublin, the audience of about a hundred groaned as he described how violent pornography had shaped his teenage students’ ideas about sexuality, and how some tech companies were telling soon-to-be 13-year-olds how to bypass parental controls. (“Oh Jesus!” said one father).

Speaking from a decade of experience, Mr. Cleary urged the parents to set limits on screen time and lobby elected officials to demand stronger technology legislation. Rather than instituting bans, he hopes to see these technologies made safer for children.

“What Greystones has done is shown that parents and communities aren’t powerless,” said Mr. Cleary, who took a leave of absence last year to conduct research with Ireland’s Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute. “It’s temporary and imperfect, a stopgap to buy time.”

Grassroots movements are just the beginning, many agree. “Enforcement of online safety legislation to hold platforms to account will play an important role,” said Niamh Hodnett, Ireland’s Online Safety Commissioner.

For now, though, the parents and teachers in Greystones are soldiering on.

Nina Carberry, an Irish member of European Parliament, said she was particularly impressed with a recent “It Takes a Village” project, in which 16-year-olds from Temple Carrig led mentoring workshops with younger students at two local primary schools. In an email, Ms. Carberry said she aims to push for similar models at the E.U. level.

Lauren Harnett, 13, participated in a workshop last year. She found the talks with older children more informative than ones with adults, and less stressful. “They said, ‘If you just use it in the right way, and if you’re open with your parents, you’ll be fine,’” she said.

This year, her first in secondary school, Lauren got her first smartphone. “When everyone around you has one, you want one,” she said. “I could have probably waited longer.”

Categories Childhood, International, Technology
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