The Meidas Report: A Media Phenomenon

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2026 //
5

You should give serious thought to subscribing to the Meidas Report. It is a citizen-driven media site that has six million subscribers, putting it into competition with major cable outlets.

From its website:

In just a few short years, MeidasTouch Network has grown into one of the most-watched news platforms in the world, with over 9 billion views on YouTube and more than 6.1 million subscribers, regularly surpassing traditional corporate and cable news networks in reach and engagement. We are deeply honored to have also received the iHeart Award for News Podcast of the Year last week and the Webby Award for Podcast of the Year.

Meidastouch.com is a progressive media outlet formed in 2020, during the pandemic, by the Meiselas brothers: Ben, Brett, and Jordan. They cover politics intensely, with videos, blogs, podcasts, and other forms of social media.

They created a PAC to oppose Donald Trump and help Democratic candidates. Ben Meiselas is an attorney. Brett Meiselas is an Emmy-award winning video editor. Jordan Meiselas works in marketing.

With these skills, they have built a media powerhouse.

Here is a recent example, written by editor-in-chief Ron Filipowski. Filipowski is an attorney, having been both a criminal defense attorney and a prosecutor. When Robert Mueller died last week, Trump immediately posted a vile comment expressing his pleasure about Mueller’s death. Mueller, of course, led the investigation of Russian efforts to help Trump win the election of 2016.

Filipowski wrote:

Trump made another disgusting post celebrating the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

… His post received widespread condemnation from people in both parties, although his hard core MAGA supporters backed up their hero by trashing Mueller for his report on Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election. 

… As a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, Mueller was shot and later returned to lead his platoon after his recovery. He received a Bronze Star for valor, a Purple Heart, two Navy/Marine Commendation medals, Republic of Vietnam Cross of Valor, and numerous other medals.

… Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume: “This is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes people not just oppose him but hate him. There was no need to say anything.”

… Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO): “The President is a petty, sick, and vile man. Robert Mueller volunteered for Vietnam – at the same time Trump avoided serving. His decades of military and public service to our nation represents everything Trump is not.”

… Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) to Politico: “It is clearly wrong and unchristian behavior. The vast majority of Americans want better.”

… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on NBC: “It’s just disgusting, it’s so heartbreaking that we have a president who is cheerleading the death of American citizens. Mueller is amongst many who have been trying to hold this president to account. He’s the most corrupt president in the history of the country.”

… Gavin Newsom: “Trump despises anyone with a deep sense of duty, discipline, and patriotism. Rest in peace, Robert Mueller.”

… Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): “It is completely tasteless and unacceptable for the sitting President of the US to celebrate anybody’s death – let alone someone who served this country. Trump continues to show us time and time again that there are no limits to how low he is willing to go.”

… Democratic activist Jamie Bonkiewicz got over 44,000 likes on X for this post: “I better not hear A SINGLE FUCKING WORD about the tweets I’ll be posting after he goes.” 

… Many contrasted Trump’s statement with those from other presidents. Barack Obama: “Bob Mueller was one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI, transforming the bureau after 9/11 and saving countless lives. But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time. Michelle and I send our condolences to Bob’s family, and everyone who knew and admired him.”

… George W. Bush: “Laura and I are deeply saddened by the loss of Robert Mueller. As a Marine in Vietnam, he proved he was ready for tough assignments. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart before returning home to pursue law. In 2001 only one week into the job, Bob transitioned the FBI’s mission to protecting the homeland after Sept 11. He led the agency effectively, helping prevent another terrorist attack on US soil. Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathy to his wife of nearly 60 years, Ann, and the Mueller family.”

… Journalist Aaron Rupar: “Incredible – Fox & Friends completely ignored Trump’s batshit post celebrating Mueller’s death during their brief news hit about Mueller’s passing, and instead highlighted the more normal response of George W Bush.”

… Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on NBC: Q – “Do you think it’s appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam? Bessent: Neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and his family. Q – So you don’t think there’s anything wrong with a post saying, ‘Good. Robert Mueller’s dead’? Bessent: We should have empathy for what’s been done to the president and his family.”

… WaPo: “In the run-up to Hungary’s pivotal election in April, a unit of Russia’s foreign intelligence service last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for PM Viktor Orban, whose friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Kremlin a strategic foothold inside NATO and EU. Officers from the intel service suggested that drastic action might be necessary – a strategy they called ‘the Gamechanger.” 

… The Russian report said one thing could “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign – the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban. Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system.” 

… The Russians staging an assassination attempt of a key foreign political candidate to boost their standing? I’m sure they would never try that in the US.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Trump

Putting ICE in Place of TSA Won’t Work, Say Experts

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2026 //
3

The ongoing partial shutdown of the federal government affects only the Department of Honeland Security. Democrats refuse to fund it without reforms in ICE, which have used violent tactics in their pursuit of immigrants. They have been given a numerical target, and they have arrested citizens as well as citizens, raided schools and churches and broken into homes without a judicial search warrant.

Democrats would like to sever ICE funding from funding other parts of the Department of Homeland Security but Republicans have refused.

One consequence is that TSA agents have been quitting, and there are long lines at many airports. Some passengers have waited 3-4 hours to board their flights, yet still were unable to board.

Some TSA agents are looking for other jobs, because they need the money.

Thanks to cuts imposed by Elon Musk’s DOGE, TSA was already short of staff.

Trump says that he will send ICE agents to take the place of TSA personnel but ICE has no training for security screening.

At a time when people are concerned about terrorism, in response to Trump’s war in Iran, it’s wrong to reduce safety at airports.

The publication Government Executive reported:

President Trump will beginning Monday shift Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to airports to provide security there in a move he said will alleviate long lines created by shutdown-induced callouts but which experienced TSA officials said would have minimal impact. 

The unusual approach comes as Trump administration officials have repeatedly lamented that Transportation Security Administration employees are calling out and quitting the agency due to the shutdown’s impact on paychecks, lengthening wait times at many airports around the country. Details of the assignments were not clear as of Sunday, despite Trump declaring that the airport deployments would occur on Monday. Tom Homan, the White House’s border czar, told CNN on Sunday that he was “working on the plan” and would come up with one soon. 

Several current and former TSA officials told Government Executive that ICE personnel will be limited in what they can accomplish at airports, as they will not have the requisite training to check identification, examine luggage x-rays or provide other key security services. TSA employees go through classroom and on-the-job training before they can staff those roles, the officials said. 

“It serves no practical use,” said one former official with decades of federal experience who declined to be named out of fear of professional reprisal. “It’s a political, publicity action, not a practical solution.” 

Homan suggested ICE employees could staff the areas where travelers exit their terminals, though former officials noted many airports already use non-TSA personnel for those areas. 

A second former senior TSA official added there are almost no functions ICE staff would be capable of offering. 

“They can basically provide little help,” the former senior employee said. 

In some airports, such as in Houston, call outs during the shutdown have reached 50%, forcing TSA to close lanes and leaving travelers waiting for hours to get through security. Employees have now missed at least one full paycheck after receiving a partial paycheck last month during the shutdown that began Feb. 14. Staff are guaranteed full back pay for their hours worked once the government reopens.

After seeing consistent staffing growth for the previous five years, TSA lost around 3,000 employees in 2025, or around 5% of its workforce, due to various firings and attrition measures. The agency has seen more than 400 employees leave the agency since the shutdown began, the White House said on Sunday. 

Congressional Democrats are holding out on funding the Homeland Security Department until the White House agrees to reforms for law enforcement personnel carrying out President Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown. They have repeatedly sought to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS—including on Saturday in a rare weekend session—but Republicans have blocked all of those efforts.

“If the Democrats do not allow for just and proper security at our airports, and elsewhere throughout our country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before,” Trump said on Sunday, making the announcement just one day before he said the deployments would begin. 

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA staff, said those workers spend months learning specific skills that enable them to detect explosives, weapons and individuals looking to evade security. They are recertified on an ongoing basis after receiving extensive instruction and seeking to replace them with ICE personnel would only exacerbate the problem. 

“You cannot improvise that,” Kelley said. “Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”

Lawmakers have met with Homan in recent days in hopes of reaching an agreement on reforms that Democrats would accept in exchange for funding all of DHS, but they have yet to strike such a deal. 

Kelley added that turning to ICE could prove dangerous, given that the allegations of excessive force that they have faced. 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Safety

Thom Hartmann: A Message to MAGA Voters: You Got Played

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2026 //
2

Thom Hartmann is a veteran journalist who write The Hartmann Report, where this article appeared:

Dear MAGA voter,

I’m not writing this to mock you. I’m writing because you were lied to. And it wasn’t by the people you were told to hate, but by the man you trusted the most.

You were pissed off when you voted in 2024. Honestly, rightfully angry. Your town lost its factory. Your kids can’t afford the house they’ve been dreaming of for years. The politicians in Washington kept promising you things and delivering nothing; in fact, Republicans even took away your Medicaid and food stamps as well as your kids’ school lunches. You wanted someone who’d finally blow the whole damn thing up and put regular people first.

So did I and millions of other Americans. The difference is who we trusted to do it. Let’s talk about what actually happened.

You were told Trump would “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington DC. Instead, as Marjorie Taylor Greene can tell you, Donald Trump has built the most corrupt, billionaire-stuffed cabinet (13 of them!) in American history. Epstein-buddy Howard Lutnick. Billionaire hustler Scott Bessent. Hedge fund managers and Wall Street insiders as far as the eye can see.

And then he handed the core agencies of the federal government — with no vote, no vetting, no accountability to anyone — over to Elon Musk, the single richest human being on the planet. Not a populist or a Washington outsider: the most powerful oligarch alive, whose source of wealth came from Obama bailing out Tesla and who now gets tens of billions in annual government contracts. 

Musk’s teenage hackers then stole your Social Security information and destroyed America’s soft power by gutting USAID: as Bill Gates said, “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.” This is your swamp now, one that’s already literally killed at least a million children around the world while handing our nation’s soft power over to Putin.

He also said there would be no more “stupid wars.” Yet he’s spending $1 billion a day and has already destroyed six American lives in Iran and still can’t explain to us why he attacked them or what actual threat that country represented to America. It appears he just did it because Putin, Netanyahu, and Kushner all encouraged him to. 

And now The Washington Post is reporting that Putin is giving Iran “targeting information” so they can kill American troops, just like when Putin put a bounty on US soldiers in Afghanistan and that was fine with Trump during his first term. Is that the kind of war you want? Somehow I doubt it.

You were also promised lower drug prices. Remember that? Trump made it a centerpiece of his campaign pitch. He looked straight into the camera and said he’d take on Big Pharma. But the pharmaceutical industry is making more money than ever before, and now the same Republican Congress that cheers Trump’s every move has cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid (the cuts come later this year).

That’s the national healthcare program that covers roughly one in five Americans, the majority of them in rural, working-class communities that voted for the same Republicans who gutted it on Trump’s orders. Your neighbors. Your family members. People who believed in him. Cuts made simply to pay for a trillion dollars of Trump’s $5 trillion tax break for himself, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and the other billionaires who put him into office. 

And then there’s the tariffs, which he told you China would pay. But China isn’t paying: you are. Tariffs are taxes collected at the border and paid by American importers, that are then passed on to American consumers like you and me. 

The people most exposed to rising prices on clothes, appliances, groceries, and cars are working-class families who spend a higher share of their income on the necessities of life. That’s you. The billionaires in his cabinet can absorb and even profit from Trump’s inflation; you can’t.

And while all this is happening, the national debt keeps exploding. It ballooned by $7 trillion during his first term. His second-term tax proposals are deficit-financed giveaways that only benefit corporations and the ultra-wealthy. 

Trump talks about “no taxes on tips” and “no taxes on Social Security” but those cuts are very, very limited and expire in a few years; the tax breaks on billionaires are deep and last forever. Your grandchildren will spend their lives paying off Trump’s tax cuts for people who summer in the Hamptons. This isn’t fiscal conservatism: it’s looting dressed up in a red hat.

Remember the wall? Mexico was going to pay for it. Mexico didn’t pay for a single inch of it. And remember when Elon Musk publicly defended keeping H-1B visas, the program Trump uses to import European workers for his shabby golf motels and that let corporations import cheaper foreign labor and hold down American wages? That caused a genuine civil war inside MAGA world for about a week, before the Murdoch/Ellison Epstein-class billionaire media moguls changed the subject. Trump sided with the billionaires; being one himself, he always sides with the billionaires.

Don’t forget Social Security and Medicare. He swore — repeatedly, explicitly — that he’d never cut them. Watch what the fine print says, particularly since he fired over 7,000 Social Security workers to make it really hard on people who are trying to sign up. That’s about encouraging people to move to the Medicare Advantage scam plans that are so profitable to his insurance industry donors.

Watch what DOGE is circling. Watch the budget proposals coming out of his own party’s Congress. The cuts aren’t coming for the people at Mar-a-Lago: they’re coming for you.

And perhaps the cruelest irony of all: the communities hit hardest by Trump’s policies are the communities that supported him most. Farmers crushed by retaliatory tariffs from trading partners. Rural hospitals dependent on federal funding now facing existential pressure. FEMA cuts hurting people in bright red Southern states. The economic pain is landing heaviest on the people who believed in him the most.

None of this is an accident. This is what happens when you elect a pathological liar who talks like a populist but governs for the donor class. Your anger was real. His betrayal is real.

I’m not asking you to become a Democrat. I’m not asking you to agree with me about anything except this: a man who fills his cabinet with hedge fund managers, hands power to the world’s richest oligarch, lets Big Pharma walk, starts a war to distract us from news he raped 13-year-old girls, and watches your grocery bill climb while calling it “victory” is not on your side.

He never was.

The swampy system you were furious at? It’s still there. It just has a new Dear Leader.

You deserve better than this. Heck, we all deserve better than this. 

Categories Billionaires, Extremism, Hoax, Lies, Trump

Audrey Watters: Who Benefits from AI? Not You.

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2026 //
4

Audrey Watters is one of the best–maybe the very best–writers about Ed-tech. As she has documented in her writings, including her book, Teaching Machines, the quest for a cheap and mechanical way to replace teachers with efficient devices has a long history. A few people dream of endless profits, but the promise of better teaching by machines has never been realized.

Watters believes that the Ed-tech industry is minting money for itself without delivering on its promises. In this article, which appears on her blog, Second Breakfast, she describes the current AI boom and the likely endgame.

She writes:

This morning I attended one of the new NYC Chancellor’s public “conversations,” his administration’s initiative to “engage directly with communities to reflect on what safety, academic rigor, and true integration look like in practice.” There were about one hundred folks in attendance, including members of the AI Moratorium for NYC schools, who were there to leaflet beforehand (and were vastly outnumbered, I should note, by the NYPD). 

As the aforementioned name suggests, this coalition of local organizations is asking for a two-year moratorium on AI in the city’s schools, pointing to the growing opposition to AI and (in their words) “to evidence that it represents substantial risk to student privacy, cognitive development and skills, critical thinking, creativity, mental health, and the environment.” I’d add that it represents substantial risk more broadly: to labor (teachers’, librarians’, translators’, social workers’) and to democracy itself.

And really, what’s the rush?! I mean, other than the desperate need of the tech sector to prove that the trillions of dollars invested in this endeavor will soon show some profit and that – unlike crypto and Web 3.0 – this isn’t just some giant fraud being perpetrated so executives can buy more private islands.

I’ve said repeatedly (but didn’t articulate into any open mic at the meeting because I still very much feel like a new New Yorker), this recent push for “AI” is yet another grandiose and grotesque experiment on children – one that no one asked for and few want. Another grandiose and grotesque experiment on all of us. 

We have lived through decades and decades now of repeated digital promises — we’ll be better, faster, stronger, more connected, what have you — and none of the computational fantasies have really come to fruition, certainly not for everyone. We are not more productive (despite now being asked to work so much more, clicking away on our devices at all hours of every day); we are not smarter; and most importantly, we are not better. (A tiny group of men are, on the other hand, now richer than any other humans have ever been in all of history. So there’s that.) Our public institutions are crumbling, in no small part because these men are fully and openly committed to the failure of democracy, having positioned themselves to profit mightily from years of neoliberalism. “AI” marks the further (and they hope, final) consolidation of their power – not just the privatization and monopolization of all information under their control, but the automation of the dissemination and replication of knowledge. These men are more than happy to sell a story, a system that trains all of us, but particularly young people, to become entirely dependent on and subservient to computational machinery; they are more than happy for us to sacrifice our cognitive capabilities, our creativity, our agency, our decision-making, our morality, to solidify their crude oligarchal dreams of total efficiency, total financialization, total domination.

Jennifer Berkshire writes about the back history to the growing backlash against not just “AI” but a lot of ed-tech and what she calls “the curious case of collective amnesia” (invoking one of Hack Education’s enduring contributions to “the discourse: “The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade” as well as Teaching Machines).

We should know by now that this stuff is almost entirely wretched – we do, right? I mean, at this stage, I’d be deeply embarrassed if I was out there, trying to argue that this stuff is any damn good. And yet here comes Silicon Valley and education reform, hand-in-hand once again, trying to peddle disruption and innovation and their long war on “one size fits all education,” armed with their algorithmic bullshit and billionaire board members.

It doesn’t help, I think, that there are several prominent technology journalists who keep falling for / perpetuating this stuff, who loudly insist in caps-lock-on prose that “THERE IS NO EVIDENCE!!!111” that devices are bad for children. (The irony, of course, is after they repeat this claim — and with such certainty — they turn around and point to dozens of stories of the most batshit–crazy news about the horrors of digital culture.)

And maybe part of the problem too is just that: we are so steeped in the insanity of techno-capitalism, the insanity of techno-capitalists that some folks are losing track of what aberrant behavior really is. Cory Doctorow writes a bit about this this week, offering “three more AI Psychoses” — a response, in part, to Samantha Cole’s excellent piece in 404 Media, “How to Talk to Someone Experiencing ‘AI Psychosis’.”

I wonder if it isn’t simply that “AI” delusions are ubiquitous (at this stage, I’m thinking these delusions are experienced by almost everyone, not just a tiny fraction of “AI” users); it’s that many of these delusions are unrecognizable as such because they reflect precisely the sort of sociopathy long embraced by Silicon Valley’s Ayn-Randian, libertarian set. “Here’s to the crazy ones” indeed.

[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft. – David Graeber, Debt…

If plagiarism is wrong and bad and theft is wrong and bad and schools are duty-bound to help instill these values in students, how can they justify adoption of a technology that is, at its core, built on stolen work and whose purpose is the extrusion of text to be passed off as one’s own thinking and writing?

I invite you to open the link and continue reading this thought-provoking article.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Online Education, Technology

David Sanger: No End in Sight to Trump’s War in Iran

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2026 //
3

David Sanger of the New York Times comments on the mess that Trump created by making war on Iran.

Before the war, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine warned Trump of the risks, including the likelihood of Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Wall Street Journal. Trump ignored his warnings, because he thinks he’s the smartest person in every room. He had the experience of a swift victory in Venezuela, so he decided Iran would be a piece of cake. He thought Iran would capitulate in two or three days.

Make no mistake: the Iranian theocratic regime is led by cruel fanatics who tolerate no dissent. Only days ago, three men were executed on charges of murdering policemen during the January protests. One of those publicly hung was a teenage wrestling champion, who said his “confession” was coerced by torture.

Trump started the war ostensibly to free the Iranian people from their tyrannical leaders but quickly dropped that goal and said his purpose was to destroy Iran’s capacity to wage war , especially on Israel.

When Iran attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump called on our NATO allies to open the choke point for 20% of the world’s oil. They refused. He began blasting our allies for failing to help us; they did not want to get involved in a war that Trump and Netanyahu started. Trump forgot that he had been belittling our allies since he returned to office (as well as during his first term in office), even threatening to attack and seize Greenland, which is part of Denmark.

He has painted himself into a corner, even threatening to crash the world economy, because of his ignorance and stupidity.

Now, thousands of Marines are en route to the Middle East. The 82nd Airborne is on alert. The world waits to see how much more damage he will inflict before he declares victory and stops his war.

David Sanger, veteran national security reporter, wrote:

Ever since President Trump began what he now delicately calls his “excursion” into Iran, Washington has been consumed by the question of when he would call it a day — even if many of his war goals remain unaccomplished.

On Friday evening, as he headed to Florida, Mr. Trump seemed to be designing that much-discussed exit. But he clearly has not yet decided whether to take it.

And there is mounting evidence — average gas price approaching $4 a gallon, infrastructure in ruins across the Persian Gulf, a decimated Iranian theocracy digging in and American allies at first rebuffing and now struggling with demands to patrol hostile waters — that the repercussions of Mr. Trump’s excursion may outlast his interest in it.

As always, Mr. Trump’s messaging is inconsistent, which his critics cite as evidence that he entered this conflict with no strategy and his followers cheer as strategic ambiguity. With thousands of additional Marines headed to the region and the pace of American and Israeli attacks quickening, Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday he had no interest in a cease-fire because the United States was “obliterating” Iran’s missile stocks, navy, air force and defense industrial base.

Hours later, perhaps sensitive to a Republican base understandably nervous about the political effects, he posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

But his latest list of those objectives left out a few of his previous goals and watered down others. He made no mention of defeating the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which appears to remain in power, along with Mojtaba Khamenei, who has succeeded his father as supreme leader, though he has yet to be seen or heard in public. Mr. Trump also omitted any message to the Iranian people, whom he told only three weeks ago: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

And after insisting in the failed negotiations that led up to the war that Iran had to ship all of its nuclear material out of the country — starting with the 970 pounds of enriched uranium that are closest to bomb-grade — he suggested a new goal. “Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability,” he wrote, “and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation.”

That is, essentially, where the United States was after it buried Iran’s nuclear program in rubble last June. The sites have remained under the watchful eye of U.S. spy satellites.

Mr. Trump ended the posting with a new demand for American allies, whom he had frozen out of his deliberations before starting the war, and gave no warning to prepare for its consequences. “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — the United States does not!” American forces would help, he said.

“Think of it as the new Trump Doctrine for the Middle East,” Richard N. Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served on the National Security Council and at the State Department during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq war, wrote on social media.

“We broke it, but you own it.”

Mr. Trump’s shifting goals continued into Saturday evening. Just a few days ago, he was calling on Israel to avoid targeting Iranian energy sites, for fear it would lead to an escalating round of retaliatory counter-strikes across the Gulf. But on Saturday, he threatened to hit Iran’s power plants if it did not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz” within 48 hours.

He said that U.S. strikes on Iranian plants would start “WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST.” Iran’s biggest plant appears to be its only operating nuclear power plant, at Bushehr. For decades, nuclear power plants have been considered completely off limits for strikes because of the obvious risk of environmental calamity.

This is not where Mr. Trump expected to be after three weeks of war.

Foreign leaders, diplomats and U.S. officials who have spoken with the president said that in the first week he voiced expectations that Iran would capitulate. That was clear in Mr. Trump’s demand on March 6 for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

The demand was mystifying, said one European diplomat with long experience dealing with Iran, given the country’s competing power centers, its national pride and a Persian state that has existed within the rough boundaries of modern-day Iran, enduring many rises and falls, since the days of Cyrus the Great around 550 B.C.

(That demand was also missing from his latest set of objectives. The White House has since said that the president does not expect a surrender announcement from Iran, but that Mr. Trump will determine when Iran has “effectively surrendered.”)

Iran’s refusal to “cry uncle,’’ as Mr. Trump termed it to reporters on Air Force One, has been only one of the surprises to the president in recent weeks.

The first was the crisis in the energy markets, which the International Energy Agency has called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” It has sent Mr. Trump and his aides scrambling. They have promised releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was only 60 percent full, reflecting a lack of planning. Over the past week the Treasury Department has issued licenses for the delivery of Russian and Iranian oil already at sea. In other words, to calm the markets, the president has approved enriching an adversary that is at war with Ukraine, an American ally, and another that is at war with the United States.

So far, the effects are minimal. Brent crude closed at around $112 a barrel on Friday after the Treasury announcements, and Goldman Sachs warned on Thursday that if ships were reluctant to make their way through the Strait of Hormuz, prices could remain high into 2027.

The Iranians clearly understand that market chaos is their one remaining superweapon. On Saturday, Tehran warned it could set fire to other facilities in the Middle East. The United States believes the country entered the war with 3,000 or so sea mines — some of which are believed to have been destroyed — and the United States has focused on destroying small boats in the Iranian fleet that are targeting tankers associated with American allies.

“All it takes is for one of those things to get through to shut down traffic,” said John F. Kirby, who served as both Pentagon and State Department spokesman after retiring as a naval officer. “The fear alone can be paralyzing to the shipping industry, as we have already seen.”

Mr. Trump’s second surprise was his sudden need for allies. He didn’t imagine it at the beginning of the conflict, the defense minister of one Gulf nation said recently, because he thought the war would be short. But patrolling the strait, and other checkpoints, appears to be a task that could last months or years.

His third surprise was the absence of any uprising among either the Revolutionary Guards or ordinary Iranians. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the Oval Office this past week “we are seeing defections at all levels as they’re starting to sense what’s going on with the regime.” But American and European intelligence officials say they have no evidence of such defections — even after Israel targeted, and eliminated, Iran’s supreme leader, its top security and intelligence chiefs and many top military officials.

All that could yet come. Wars are not won or lost in three weeks. But Mr. Trump entered the Iran war after enjoying the fruits of quick victories. A bombing run over Iran’s three major nuclear sites in June was a one-evening expedition, essentially burying the country’s nuclear stockpiles and wiping out thousands of its centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

The commando raid to seize Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas was similarly swift. And so far, the government Mr. Trump left in place — essentially Mr. Maduro’s government — has been compliant. That operation has helped Mr. Trump destabilize Cuba, which has lost the Venezuelan fuel supplies that it has long depended on. The other day the electric grid in Cuba collapsed, and administration officials have been openly suggesting that the government will, too.

Perhaps those quick results encouraged Mr. Trump to believe the U.S. military was all-powerful, and that the mullahs and generals and militias that run Iran, a country of 92 million people, would crumble. Perhaps he rushed.

Military historians will be dissecting this conflict for a long time. But for now it is clear that Iran is a different kind of challenge. Mr. Trump started using the word “excursion” to suggest this is just a short trip, a brief diversion. But there is no real end in sight.

Categories Ignorance, International, Trump

Brian Stelter: Pete Hegseth Will Appeal Court Ruling that Favors Freedom of the Press

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2026 //
3

Brian Stelter of CNN is one of the very best reporters about the state of journalism. In his newsletter “Reliable Sources,” he reported Sunday morning that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will appeal a ruling by a federal judge that prevents him from excluding mainstream journalists from covering the Pentagon. Hegeth wants to limit or ignore freedom of the press. He wants the Defense Department to be covered only by rightwing journalists.

Stelter writes at CNN:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been taking steps to thwart news coverage of the Pentagon for more than a year. Now he has finally met some resistance.

Friday’s ruling by a federal judge striking down Pentagon press limits was cheered by the news organization that sued over the policy, The New York Times, and by a wide range of First Amendment advocates.

“This is a great day for freedom of the press in the United States,” the Pentagon Press Association, which represents scores of journalists who regularly cover the military, said. “It is also hopefully a learning opportunity for Pentagon leadership, which took extreme steps to limit press access to information in wartime.”

Some beat reporters who were pushed out of the Pentagon complex last fall are now discussing how to get their credentials reinstated.

But Hegseth’s press office says, “We disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal,” signaling that he will continue to pick fights with the news media.

At recent press briefings about the war in Iran, Hegseth has mirrored President Trump’s hyperbolic language about the media and made plainly false claims about news coverage.

More alarmingly, from the perspective of Pentagon correspondents, he has also hindered the free flow of information about the US military, in part through the restrictive press pass rules that The Times challenged in court.

The rules had the effect of replacing major news outlets like The Times and CNN with a handpicked group of relatively small and explicitly right-wing outlets.

But the rules veered into unconstitutional territory, senior US District Judge Paul Friedman wrote in Friday’s ruling.

The policy is “viewpoint discrimination,” Friedman wrote, “not based on political viewpoint but rather based on editorial viewpoint — that is, whether the individual or organization is willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”

Tightening control over coverage

Governments routinely try to encourage favorable coverage, but Hegseth has gone much further since leaving Fox News for the Defense Department, which he has rebranded as the Department of War.

One of his first moves was to boot some news outlets, including CNN, from long-established media workspaces inside the Pentagon complex.

It was billed as a temporary “media rotation program,” boosting pro-Trump media outlets that never had a presence at the Pentagon before. For one year, Breitbart was meant to replace NPR, One America News Network to replace NBC News, and so forth.

But any argument about media diversity was undermined by the department’s inaccessibility.

Hegseth’s spokespeople declined to hold regular press conferences, effectively closed the Pentagon press briefing room, and made key parts of the Pentagon complex off-limits to journalists without an official escort.

By May 2025, the Pentagon Press Association was calling the restrictions “a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

It was apparent to many beat reporters that Hegseth wanted to prop up propagandistic outlets while punishing traditional media outlets.

He promoted himself on Fox, for instance, and gave access to right-wing content creators, while bashing what he called the biased “hoax press.”

In September, his press office circulated a new policy controlling the press credentials that grant physical access to the Pentagon complex.

The policy challenged the ability of reporters to freely gather information, for instance, through leaks from sources inside the military, by enabling the Pentagon to suspend or revoke credentials due to reporting.

Media lawyers said the revised rules criminalized routine reporting. So, rather than abide by the new policy, journalists from virtually every major American news outlet turned in their press passes en masse last October.

The Pentagon gave credentials to what it called “the next generation of the Pentagon press corps,” made up of staples of the MAGA media diet that are barely known to the rest of America.

Those media outlets were welcomed into the building’s workspaces, though the cubicles and offices are said to be largely empty nowadays. Before long, some of those outlets also began to complain about a lack of transparency from the Pentagon.

A handpicked ‘press corps’

When the US and Israel began strikes in Iran, and the Pentagon resumed somewhat regular press briefings, Hegseth called almost exclusively on MAGA-aligned outlets that were given front-row seats in the briefing room.

Representatives of bigger news outlets with decades of experience covering the US military — who were granted temporary access to the building — were seated in the back and generally ignored.

Furthermore, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon “barred press photographers” from some briefings after the photographers published photos of Hegseth “that his staff deemed ‘unflattering.’”

Those photographers were allowed back inside for the most recent briefing on March 19.

But Hegseth added a new anti-media talking point to his repertoire that day, claiming that the “dishonest and anti-Trump press will stop at nothing — we know this, at this point — to downplay progress, amplify every cost, and call into question every step.”

He diagnosed them with “TDS,” short for Trump Derangement Syndrome, a favorite insult of MAGA loyalists.

Hegseth also said Iran wants “to put out fake AI-generated images, which, by the way, sometimes our press happens to fall for, like the Abraham Lincoln on fire.”

His assertion that the American press has fallen for the fake imagery is itself fake. As CNN’s Daniel Dale reported, “There is no evidence that mainstream US media outlets promoted fake videos of the Lincoln on fire.” In fact, several US outlets, including The Times, debunked the videos.

When it filed suit against the Defense Department last December, The Times said the press pass restrictions were “an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes.”

When Friedman ruled in agreement on Friday, The Times treated it as front-page news, and a spokesperson said the ruling “enforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country.”

“Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars,” The Times said.

Julian Barnes, the Times reporter named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, wrote on X, “This is a big win for the press, the public and the United States military, which fights better when observed by a robust press corps.”

Journalists at other news outlets are also monitoring the case closely. A CNN spokesperson said of the ruling, “This is an encouraging development and we are evaluating next steps and what this means for CNN.”

All the while, most original journalism about military matters has still been produced by the traditional outlets that lost access to the Pentagon complex last fall.

While Hegseth and his deputies have adopted a hostile approach toward the press corps, rank-and-file military officials have not.

When the ruling was handed down, beat reporters who had previously worked inside the Pentagon received messages from military personnel saying things like: “Does this mean we’ll see you Monday?”

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Freedom of the Press

Joyce Vance on the Death of Robert Mueller

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2026 //
1

Joyce Vance was US Attorney for northern Alabama.

She wrote today:

Former Marine, U.S.Attorney, FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller passed away Friday evening. He was a giant of a man whose commitment to justice and fairness was staunch. I met him for the first time during the investigation into the murder of my Father-in-Law shortly before I went to DOJ. His, was one of the good examples. Every prosecutor who came in contact with him was better off for it.

When the Mueller report was finished during Trump’s first term in office, Trump‘s Attorney General, Bill Barr, claimed it was a total exoneration. That, of course, was not the case. Once the entire, albeit redacted, report became available, it was clear that it was a stunning indictment of a sitting president—but one that respected constraints on prosecutors that prevented an actual indictment of a sitting president. It should’ve been a roadmap for Congress to impeach and convict, but they did not take up Muller’s invitation.

Trump shared his comments on the passing of an American hero this morning: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

Trump is not a decent person and we should not expect decency from him.

Across the country, people who knew and worked with Mueller will be honoring his service to our nation as they remember him. But it’s not just a great man and a loss for the country that we should mourn today. It is also a loss of decency, honor, and integrity. We should have a president who is better than this.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Addendum:

Professor Christopher Lamb at Indiana University tabulated the associates of Donald Trump who were arrested based on the Mueller Report.

Categories Character, Trump

Olivia Troye: Our Government Is For Sale

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2026 //
24

Olivia Troye was Vice-President Pence’s national security advisor. She resigned in August 2020 and endorsed challenger Joe Biden. She now writes a blog where she comments on current issues. The blog is called Olivia of Troye.

In this post, she writes about open corruption and its danger to national security. Paying Trump family members to gain access to government policy.

She began:

I read this reporting twice. And then I sat with it.

Because once you strip away the crypto jargon, the shell companies, and the carefully lawyered denials, what’s left is something deeply unsettling—and profoundly dangerous for American governance.

Four days before Donald Trump was sworn back into office, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase 49% of a Trump-linked company for $500 million. Not a hotel. Not a licensing deal. A major ownership stake in a company tied directly to the sitting president’s family.

The buyer wasn’t just a foreign investor. It was Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, brother of the country’s president, and overseer of a vast intelligence, surveillance, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) empire that U.S. officials had already flagged as a national security risk.

Months later, the Trump administration approved unprecedented access for the UAE to hundreds of thousands of the most advanced American AI chips, technology that had previously been restricted over fears it could be diverted to China. This has been a concern inside national security circles for years. Now here we are.

Under the Biden administration, Tahnoon’s efforts to secure advanced U.S. AI chips were largely blocked. Intelligence officials and lawmakers, Republicans included, raised repeated concerns about his companies’ ties to Chinese firms, including Huawei.

After Trump’s election, the door reopened. Tahnoon met repeatedly with Trump, his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and senior U.S. officials. He pledged massive investment in the United States. He was welcomed into the Oval Office and seated at White House dinners alongside cabinet members.

Two months later, the administration committed to giving the UAE access to roughly 500,000 advanced AI chips per year, enough to build one of the world’s largest AI data-center clusters. At this point, we have to stop pretending this is ambiguous. This is what corruption looks like in real time. 

Not a bag of cash. Not a secret memo. But a foreign intelligence-linked official quietly purchasing leverage over the family of a sitting U.S. president, and then watching U.S. policy move in his favor.

That isn’t coincidence. It’s influence.

And when influence can be bought this way, American decision-making no longer belongs to the American people. It belongs to whoever can pay the most, hide it the best, and wait it out.

As someone who has worked inside the national security system, I want to be very clear: the risk here is serious.

Advanced AI chips aren’t just commercial products. They underpin surveillance systems, military capabilities, cyber operations, and global intelligence dominance. Decisions about who gets access to them are supposed to be driven by national security risk assessments, not private financial entanglements with the president’s family.

When those lines blur, national security becomes transactional. And once that happens, the damage doesn’t stay contained. It ripples through alliances and corrodes intelligence-sharing. Furthermore, it shatters America’s credibility when we warn the world about corruption and foreign influence.

This isn’t just corruption. It’s governance by auction.

Trump says he knew nothing about this deal. That doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse.

Whether through direct knowledge or willful blindness, the outcome is the same: a presidency structurally exposed to foreign money, foreign leverage, and foreign interests. Modern bribery doesn’t arrive in envelopes, it arrives through access and leverage. And it is the exposure of this country: its policy, its security, its future, to the highest bidder.

The post doesn’t end here. Open the link and continue reading this alarming post.

Categories Ethics, For-Profit, Trump

Florida: Sociology Professors Rebel Against Censorship of Their Field

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2026 //
2

Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have zealously imposed censorship of race, gender, sexuality, and other topics they consider unmentionable.

The Guardian reports that professors of sociology are ignoring the state mandates or openly opposing state censorship. It is impossible, they say, to teach sociology while ignoring that the censored topics are the center of their field.

Brianna Holt of The Guardian reported:

Across Florida universities, some sociology professors are quietly choosing not to alter their courses in response to new state guidelines restricting how topics like race, gender and sexuality can be discussed. Rather than rewriting syllabi or removing foundational material, as the new demands would call for, they say they are continuing to teach their classes as designed. The professors view the preservation of their curricula not as an act of defiance, but as a professional responsibility to provide students with a full and rigorous education.

In late January, Florida’s department of education introduced what many professors are calling a censored sociology textbook for use in the state’s public colleges and universities, along with a list of proposed guidelines at state schools, restricting various discussions related to systemic discrimination, gender and sexual identity, race-conscious remedies, and the structural causes of inequality. Faculty members say this move reflects a broader effort to narrow academic freedom in higher education and follows several years of legislation aimed at reshaping public university curricula under the banner of combating “woke ideology”.

“This is part of a coordinated assault on civil rights in the state, in the country, including censoring the nation’s history,” said Zachary Levenson, an associate professor of sociology at FloridaInternational University. “The warning is clear to professors: shut up or lose your job….”

Levenson pointed to a list of prohibited topics outlined in the proposed guidelines document, which bars course content that frames systemic or institutional discrimination as a driving cause of present-day inequality, suggests that bias is inherent among Americans or describes institutions as intentionally oppressive. The guidelines also restrict discussions that argue that most gender differences are socially constructed, that propose race-conscious remedies to address historical discrimination or that assert a causal relationship between institutional sexism and unequal outcomes. Even course material explaining how individuals understand or determine their sexual orientation or gender identity falls within the scope of what instructors are instructed to avoid. For sociologists, whose field often analyzes structural inequality through those very lenses, the language is unsettling.

Categories Education Reform

Treasury Department Expects to Make Two Coins with Trump’s Face on Them

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2026 //
1

Republicans are eager to put Trump’s name and face wherever possible, both to please him and to acknowledge him as the Sun God of their party.

Two plans are under discussion. One, which appears likely to go into distribution, is to mint a $1 coin, whose image of Trump was approved by him, a handsome profile.

The other is a 24 karat gold coin that would be minted to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation. It would be sold for thousands of dollars and would be super-sized, as much as 3″ across.

However, the gold coin is controversial. It is supposed to be approved by two commissions. The first one rejected the idea because putting the face of a living President on a coin seemed to them akin to a king, not appropriate for a democracy.

The second commission, stocked with Trump allies, is enthisisstic about the gold coin.

Dan Diamond of The Washington Post wrote:

A federal arts commission on Thursday voted to approve a commemorative U.S. gold coin featuring Donald Trump, the administration’s latest effort to celebrate the president, even as Democrats and members of another federal committee say the idea is deeply inappropriate and potentially illegal.

The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars. A Mint official told the panel that Trump had personally approved the design.

Members of the Commission of Fine Arts — composed entirely of Trump appointees, including a 26-year-old executive assistant whose only listed credential for the post was managing Trump’s portrait project — spent several minutes discussing potential changes to the coin, including how big to make it, before officially endorsing it.

“I think the larger the better, and the largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” said Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s executive assistant. Harris also said that the image captured Trump looking “very strong and very tough” and that it would be “fitting” to have him on a coin to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

James McCrery II, who served as Trump’s first architect on his planned ballroom before wrangling with the president over its size, encouraged Treasury officials to make the coin “as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter” as he led the vote to approve it.

But new coin designs are supposed to receive approval from two panels — and that second panel, the bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, refused last month to consider the proposed gold coin. In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty.

“It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage,” said Michael Moran, a Republican coin collector who then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) recommended for appointment. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Several members of the coin committee said the Trump administration could seek to mint the coin without their panel’s approval but would probably face legal challenges.

The coin committee is composed of numismatists, or experts in coin collecting, as well as a historian and an artist who specializes in medallic arts. Its most famous former member — retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a longtime coin collector — said he was disheartened because he believed well-designed coins could inform and inspire. He cited as examples a 1998 silver dollar that honored Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved, escaped and was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a 2017 gold coin that depicted Lady Liberty as an African American woman.

“I’m not enthusiastic about memorializing Mr. Trump on a coin because he has done so much damage to our country,” said Abdul-Jabbar, who served on the committee a decade ago. “It takes a huge consensus to get agreement on something like this, and I’m not inclined to be supportive of the president’s request.”

The White House did not respond to questions about the commemorative coin and whether it was appropriate to commission it. The Treasury Department, which oversees the Mint, said the commemorative coin was appropriate for this year’s anniversary.

“As we approach our 250th birthday, we are thrilled to prepare coins that represent the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, and there is no profile more emblematic for the front of such coins than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement.

Only one past president — Calvin Coolidge — was featured on a U.S. coin in his lifetime. Coolidge’s portrait appeared on a commemorative coin to mark the nation’s sesquicentennial in 1926, a year when he was president, with an image of George Washington overlaid. Coolidge’s inclusion sparked controversy, and most of the coins were later melted.

The Trump-themed gold coin marks the administration’s latest effort to shape U.S. currency. Officials last year proposed a separate $1 coin design featuring the president’s likeness, intended to honor the sesquicentennial and enter circulation, but the coin committee balked at taking up the proposal. Mint officials argue that because the committee declined to consider the coin, the administration is not bound by its review — a claim that current committee members dispute.

Meanwhile, the arts commission in January approved the Trump-themed $1 coin. The Treasury Department has not yet specified whether or when that coin will enter circulation.

A photograph of President Donald Trump, featured at the National Portrait Gallery, inspired the image used for the planned gold coin. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Democrats have bristled at efforts to recognize Trump on currency and attempted to stop it. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), one of several Democrats who introduced legislation last year intended to block any living or sitting president from being featured on U.S. currency, told The Washington Post that the Trump-themed gold coin was “embarrassing” and against the nation’s values.

“Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy,” added Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). Lawmakers and congressional staff have also cited past laws they say should constrain the administration, such as a 2005 law that restricted some $1 coins to honoring deceased presidents.

Donald Scarinci, a Democrat whom Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) recommended to the coin committee, said that gold coins presented a “loophole” because the Treasury Department has the independent power, without congressional authority, to mint them.

“They can definitely make the coin without our review. But it would be an illegal coin,” Scarinci said. “It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about whoever the president is. It’s not something done in a democracy.”

Trump has also sought to remake White House grounds, proposing a visitor screening center also under consideration Thursday and demolishing the White House’s East Wing to build his long-desired ballroom. His projects extend into Washington, with plans to construct a 250-foot triumphal arch along with other projects that would leave a physical imprint on the city.

The wrangling over the coin comes amid a bigger fight over how Trump and his allies are seeking to memorialize the 79-year-old president, with nearly three years remaining in his term. Trump’s deputies have put his name on buildings, such as the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, drawing complaints from lawmakers and lawyers who say that only Congress can rename the facilities, and GOP lawmakers have proposed renaming Dulles International Airport after him.

Those efforts are generally unpopular, surveys have found. About two-thirds of Americans said they opposed efforts to rename Dulles Airport and the Kennedy Center after Trump, with about 15 percent in favor, according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted last month. Majorities of Americans also said they opposed demolishing the East Wing to build the ballroom and erecting the triumphal arch, according to the poll.

Trump officials last year also scrapped designs for commemorative quarters that were approved in 2024 by the arts commission and coin committee, months before Trump took office, and would have honored Black Americans and notable women. Coin committee members said they were unhappy about the administration’s decision to instead issue quarters honoring the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address, calling the process flawed and the new designs lacking.

“The designs, the themes that they came up with for the quarters — that could have been done by a fifth-grade class on American history,” Moran said.

Coin committee members said they will continue to balk at considering currency with Trump’s face on it.

“I think all of us feel the weight of responsibility here,” Scarinci said. He noted that Trump fired holdovers on the arts commission and that the administration could do the same with the coin committee, whose members are appointed by the Treasury Department.

“They may fire us all,” Scarinci added. “They may replace us all to make this coin … but there’s a very high caliber of people on this committee, they know numismatics, and they know history, and they know this is wrong.”

Arts commissioners in January, at the first meeting of the reconstituted board, showed little compunction of their counterparts on the coin committee as they weighed the $1 coin and discussed Trump’s own preferences.

Two of the proposed designs “both remind me a little bit of that portrait that was done of the president, which he did not like,” said Roger Kimball, a critic that Trump named to the panel. But he praised another version that had “a statesmanlike quality, to the coif of the hair.”
The commission ultimately recommended that version.

Officials last year proposed a separate $1 coin design featuring the president’s likeness. The arts commission recommended this version in January. (U.S. Treasury)

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Trump
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