Maine: An Independent Voter Explains Why She Will Vote for Graham Platner

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
3

I just sent another contribution to Graham Platner, who is running against Senator Susan Collins in Maine.

Collins presents herself as a “moderate” Republican but she always votes for Trump when herr vote is needed. Occasionally, when her vote won’t change the outcome, she votes with Democrats.

Collins met with Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and he assured her that he believed in precedent. He promised–she thought–that he would not o return Roe v. Wade. Either he lied or she misunderstood. Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

This column was written by an independent voter. She voted for Collins in the past. She is voting for Graham Platner now. She explains why.

Categories Education Reform

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

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
5

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

Thompson wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Education Industry, Students, Technology, Trump, Unions

Why LAUSD Chose an Insider as Its New Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
5

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

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

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

Choosing a respected insider guarantees stability, not disruption.

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

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

White House Criticizes Smithsonian Museum for “Extreme Political Activism”

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Education Reform

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

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
3

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

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

He writes:

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate a rebellion…

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

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

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

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

On Tyranny (the book)

On Tyranny (free resources)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
5

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

He said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America is calling and we must answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Godspeed America.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History

Frank Sinatra: “The House I Live In”

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
2

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

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

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

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

Categories Education Reform

Florida Threatens to Withhold Diplomas from Students in Anti-ICE Silent Protest

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
4

Scott Maxwell, opinion columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, wrote about the state’s effort to silence speech, even a silent protest. It is heartening to know that there are students in Florida willing to dissent. It is disheartening to learn that state officials never heard of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Back in March, a handful of students at Florida International University stood up at an event where the school president was speaking and showed off their T-shirts.


They didn’t say anything to interrupt the program or speakers.


Instead, they simply revealed shirts that said they wanted the state school to stop coordinating with ICE on immigrant crackdowns on campus via the slogan: “ICE OFF FIU.”


Now, months later, the school is trying to discipline the students — even threatening to withhold their diplomas — if they don’t apologize for expressing their opinions.


In one of the creepiest twists, the school told the students that the only way they can escape punishment and “receive a diploma” would be to make a two-minute “video reflection” swearing they now understand what they did wrong.


It sounds like a hostage video. Except in this case, the hostages are being forced to apologize for free thought and expression.


Such is life in the “Free State of Florida.”


Once upon a time, college students were encouraged to be free-thinkers. That is, in fact, what Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s other GOP leaders claim to believe … when they’re renaming roads after Charlie Kirk anyway.


But what they really mean is that Florida students should think the way they do or else shut the hell up.


And this is just the latest attack on speech by DeSantis and his fellow Republican lawmakers.
There was also the state’s infamous “Stop WOKE” bill where the governor and lawmakers tried to make it illegal for private companies to hold diversity training sessions that offended these bro-flakes’ fragile sensibilities. (That part of the law was, of course, ruled unconstitutional.)


There have been multiple cases where the state tried to fire employees who said things the politicians disliked about Charlie Kirk. (The firings have been repeatedly challenged, with the state already agreeing to pay one fired biologist $485,000 for her wrongful termination.)

And a few years ago, DeSantis signed a law that would’ve allowed the state to actually imprison Floridians who donated more than $3,000 to citizen-led efforts to get amendments on the state ballot. Yes, imprison. (A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump struck down that law as well, declaring the politicians’ attempt to arrest citizens who donated to causes the governor disliked as “wholly foreign to the First Amendment.”)


It’s tempting to go numb to this constant and casual assault on your rights. And to the steady stream of public money spent on these losing legal battles with attorney bills at $675 and $725 an hour.


But this Independence Day weekend seems like a good time to remember that truly patriotic Americans don’t support government trying to suppress speech.

You don’t have to agree with the FIU students’ anti-ICE sentiments. Many Floridians certainly don’t.


But if you claim to call yourself a patriot, you’d damn well better support their right to express it.
As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said, the First Amendment wasn’t created to protect viewpoints everyone likes, but specifically for “freedom for the thought that we hate.”


In the FIU case, Community Justice Project attorney Adam Saper, who’s representing the students pro bono, said: “This prosecution is the most clear violation of the constitution’s constitutional rights. They’re trying to silence these particular students who were speaking up against a policy of this school.”

That sentiment was echoed by the national free speech group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which honed in on the fact that the targeted “speech” involved words on a T-shirt — which the university obviously doesn’t crack down on with any regularity.


“Since this case involves clothing, would a student be prohibited from wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt in a university building under the same policy?” asked FIRE attorney Garrett Gravley.

“What about a Palestinian keffiyeh or an Israeli flag lapel pin? If a student wore purple for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, would that be actionable?”


Of course not. Even if the students had the audacity to … um … stand.


According to emails from university officials obtained by Axios and other news outlets, even school officials conceded that the students’ actions “did not disrupt the event.”


Basically, as far as protests go, this one seemed about as tame as it gets. Just a thoughtful, brief and silent statement of opinion. But apparently that was too much for Florida.


The school has said little about the case. But in correspondence with the students, FIU cited its policies on “student conduct” and “expression.”
Those rules are a lengthy, self-contradicting mess. They attempt to place a bevy of restrictions on students expressing their viewpoints while also stressing that none of the school’s rules “should be interpreted” as abridging anyone’s Constitutional rights, including “the freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment.”

It’s like a prosecutor telling you that you’re not entitled to a speedy trial or access to an attorney … while acknowledging that the United States Constitution says you’re guaranteed to precisely that.


Interestingly, the students staged their silent protest in March without much hubbub. It wasn’t until weeks later that the school told the kids they were in trouble.


It almost looks like someone told school president Jeanette Nuñez — DeSantis’ former lieutenant governor, one of many DeSantis allies rewarded with cushy, high-paying university jobs — that she’d better get these critically thinking kids in line.


I sent Nuñez and some of her staffers an email this past week, asking if anyone in Tallahassee had told her she needed to crack down on the students. She did not respond.


She also didn’t answer another question I posed: Whether she’d ever attended her own school’s class on the First Amendment — one that says it explains why “the rights of conscience” are protected in this nation.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, DeSantis, Florida, Freedom of Speech

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the Promise of America

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
4

As a citizen of New York City, I am pleased to have voted for Zohran Mamdani. I am not a Democratic Socialist. I am a Democrat.

I like his determination to deliver on his promises. I like his zestfulness. I like his idealism and his determination to protect the weak and vulnerable.

The other day, he jumped into a public swimming pool, fully clothed, in Harlem, surrounded by children. No shoes, but a suit and tie. He makes people happy. He has a great smile.

I don’t agree with him about everything, but I have never agreed with any elected official about everything.

I feel that he is a good man who wants to keep his promises and make life affordable.

He’s a Muslim, I’m a Jew.

Remember during the Knicks championship series, someone posted on social media:

“My mayor is Muslim,

My bagel is Jewish,

My Christian’s Dior,

The Knicks win in four.”

Okay, they won in five but the point is that we all live together. We work together. Today we will watch dozens of Tall Ships from all over the world parade up the Hudson River. And we cheer together.

That’s New York City. That’s America.

Happy Fourth of July!

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York Harbor. Long before the name “New York” had ever been spoken, Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazzano and Hudson after whom we’ve named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs.  

When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land, lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising, a city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing world-wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.  

Tomorrow, our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. Two hundred and fifty years of a grand experiment in self-governance — an experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. Two hundred and fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together — both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see?  

Here at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City.  

The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington. In July of 1776, our city simmered under the yoke of oppression. The British had imposed a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers, and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self-evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill.  

The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governors Island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned and we were soundly defeated. After only a few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse.  

But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat-bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental Army survived to fight another day. Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river’s edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City’s waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since — an opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities — like everything in New York City — are not given. They are won.  

In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a recently emancipated Black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well — and to help hundreds of others do the same. He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York Harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before: a home. Weeksville still stands today — a living, breathing testament to what we know America to be: a place each of us has the power to make.  

The Harbor was busy those years, as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today, Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island — Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity.  

Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew.  

Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of Black Americans north during the Great Migration; it drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War; it invited countless others from the West Indies, and South Asia, and West Africa, and across the world. And it is what brought my family to this city when I was seven years old.  

My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America — the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here.  

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.  

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.  

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.  

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty […] hither have they fled.” And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see?  

We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.  

Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.  

Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family.  

Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.  

We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods.  

We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots.  

We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.  

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: “Love it or leave it,” they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?    

Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July — I think too of the ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons — today, we call it City Hall Park.  

There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow — that we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison — grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name: America.  

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.  

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.  

Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.  

### 

Categories Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Immigration, Justice

Rhode Island: A Setback for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2026 //
0

Rhode Island welcomed charters under former Governor Gina Raimondo. When she left to become President Biden’s Secretary of Commerce, lieutenant governor Dan McKee took her place. He was widely viewed as a strong supporter of charter schools. He was closely associated with the creation of Rhode Island’s mayoral academies, especially the Blackstone Valley Prep network. But this year, he signed legislation pausing the approval of new charter schools for three years. He said that declining enrollment and funding challenges warranted the pause.

This was awkward for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (sic), which had honored him in 2009 as a Charter School Champion. Taken aback, the Alliance did something unprecedented. It withdrew his award!

Today, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools withdrew its recognition of Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee as a Charter School Champion, marking the first time in the organization’s 21-year history this award has been rescinded.

This happened after McKee signed a bill “that enacts a moratorium on public charter schools for three years, lowers the statewide cap from 35 to 28, and prohibits already approved schools from opening.”

Think about it: 9.9% of Rhode Island’s students are enrolled in charter schools. Some are in private and religious schools. Probably 80-85% attend public schools. Where should the Governor’s priorities lie?

Shawgi Tell wrote about Rhode Island and the Governor’s decision here.

He wrote, in part:

This is a rare and unusual move in the U.S. given how aggressively neoliberals have been imposing school privatization on the nation for the last few decades. It is also noteworthy that both chambers of the State’s legislature overwhelmingly approved the three-year moratorium on these privately-operated schools. Opposition to charter schools has been steadily growing across the country over the years.

Not surprisingly, many business groups, charter school advocates, and even some democrats tried to pressure the Governor and legislature not to approve such a moratorium. The fact that many democrats still support privately-operated charter schools goes against the mainstream narrative that it is mostly or only republicans who support school privatization.

Whether this moratorium decision by Governor McKee and the state legislature is based on principle or cynical maneuvering by certain factions of the rich against other competing factions, the moratorium is still a positive step forward for the public interest and public schools. More charter schools always means more problems.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Rhode Island
« Older Entries