Joyce Vance Explains Trump’s Continuing Battle Against Birthright Citizenship

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2026 //
5

Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor for northern Alabama, describes Trump’s renewed effort to block birthright citizenship. His obsession with immigrants is odd, since two of his wives were immigrants. His mother was an immigrant. His children were born before either Ivana or Melania had become a citizen. And Melania’s parents were beneficiaries of chain migration.

The Supreme Court has spoken; birthright citizenship is part of the Constitution. Babies born here, with rare exceptions like one for children born to foreign diplomats, are American citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status. 

There was an asterisk, of course. We discussed it at the time the decision in Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, came down. The asterisk was the concurrence by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority but had different reasons for reaching that result. (For more detail, that piece is here.)

Justice Kavanaugh believes Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship violated a federal law—but importantly, not the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. That matters because although Trump can’t amend the Constitution with an executive order, Congress can change laws it has passed. Kavanaugh wasn’t particularly subtle; his opinion was an invitation for Congress to do just that, implying he would then flip sides. Congress, he wrote, could “enact new legislation” that ends automatic citizenship for babies born to people who are “unlawfully or temporarily in the country.”

But apparently Congress doesn’t want to do that, at least not now. 

Barbara did not, however, stop Donald Trump. Thursday, in a pair of Executive Orders that read more like political puff pieces than actual policy, Trump tried, again, to undo birthright citizenship.

The first order is titled “Ending Birth Tourism.” You can find it here.

That’s ironic, since Trump-branded properties in Florida were linked to Russian birth tourism back in 2018, although it appears to have involved people in his buildings leasing their property to birth tourists, with no indication Trump or his businesses were benefiting financially. 

The executive order defines birth tourism as any effort by someone with a nonimmigrant visa to enter the U.S. “for the purpose of giving birth on American soil” or any effort by someone to help such a person enter the United States. It gives the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security the authority to take:

  • appropriate action to prevent the entry into the United States of, or the granting of any visa or other travel authorization to, any alien entering or attempting to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism; 
  • revoking the visa or travel authorization and permanently barring entry of any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism.

The Secretaries can also deny entry to or remove any alien from the U.S. if they “previously engaged or plans to engage in birth tourism” and also lets them take “appropriate action” against people and entities that facilitate birth tourism. 

And, of course, there’s a loophole so Trump can still help out his friends. Because there’s always one. The Secretaries, “may exempt a foreign national from actions taken pursuant to this order on humanitarian grounds or when the foreign national’s entry is in the national interest, as determined by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security.” One can only imagine the subtlety with which an administration that gives every appearance of offering pardons for sale could deploy a provision like that to its benefit.

The second executive order has a title so saccharine that you know it must have given Stephen Miller a thrill when he picked it out: Continuing To Protect The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship.

The EO, which you can read here, purports to take away birthright citizenship “when neither parent of that person (the baby) is a citizen and any of the following applies”:

  • “either parent of that person is an alien enemy”. They define “alien enemy” as a member of certain designated terrorist organizations, in other words, a concept so vague as to be applied however the administration chooses to—we all remember the boats blown out of the water on baseless claims that fishermen on them were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, intent on invading the U.S. 
  • “either parent of that person is a foreign government employee,” which they define to include traditional exclusions that are recognized to birthright citizenship like foreign ambassadors’ kids or embassy employees who are foreign citizens, but it also includes new categories like “persons employed by an international organization that possess international-organization immunity” or children born to a parent who “engaged in a commercial transaction to purchase or access birthright citizenship for the person, or engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship,” a concept so poorly designed it could be used to target people the administration wants to while permitting others to retain citizenship. It purports to deny citizenship to babies “born in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute,” perhaps a nod at Justice Kavanaugh as there were four clear votes for the proposition that this is a constitutional right, not a statutory one.

There will, of course, be litigation. The issue of standing, among others, will have to be evaluated, and then the pro-democracy lawyers will go to court. We will find out if Justice Kavanaugh meant it when he said only Congress could change the law, not another, more carefully worded but still unconstitutional directive from the authoritarian in the White House. 

These newest Trump’s executive orders are little more than a performative stunt, a smack back from a narcissist who doesn’t like to be told no, even by the nation’s highest Court, which usually tells him yes. The EO’s seem unlikely to find much love from the lower courts, given the precedent from Barbara that they are obligated to apply. But we do live in the era of the unitary executive and a Supreme Court that panders to that theory, and sometimes to its current personification. So we will watch; we will see how the administration tries to implement its new policies and how the courts respond.

The issue of who gets to be a citizen is too important to be left to the whims of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. This whole sordid affair exemplifies why we have laws and why it’s important to be a rule of law country. Trump is trying to change the rules that determine who can be an American to suit his own whims. That’s not how a democracy works. We believe in justice and fairness, not kings. No kings. Not on this issue or any other. 

Here at Civil Discourse, we’ll keep following this story long after today’s headlines disappear. If you want to know what happens next, make sure you’re subscribed!

Categories Education Reform

Texas: Latest Poll Shows Democrats Surging

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2026 //
3

The Texas Pulse Poll shows James Talarico leading Ken Paxton in the US Senate race, Gina Hinojosa only one point behind Governor Greg Abbott, and Vicki Goodwin leading in the crucial race for Lieutenant Governor.

If this trend continues, Texas could flip blue, which would be historic.

Polls are evanescent, but the trend from red to blue is impressive.

Categories Elections, Opinion Polling, Texas

James Traub: The Surpringly Impressive Reading List in Texas

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2026 //
13

As a native Texan, I have become unaccustomed to hearing good news about the state’s education system. Under the reign of Gregg Abbott, the state has persistently underfunded its public schools, and Abbott went to extreme lengths to enact a huge voucher program that will inevitably drain even more money from the public schools. The state’s elected leaders are more devoted to religious schools than to public schools, which enroll over five million children (most of whom are Hispanic).

These youngsters will one day be the majority in Texas, but the state legislature–which is about 2/3 non-Hispanic white–doesn’t care about them.

Imagine my surprise when I read this article by James Traub in The New York Times. I consider this account to be very good news indeed. Traub is a highly accomplished journalist, and I’m always interested in whatever he writes.

I have been a devotee of E.D. (Don) Hirsch Jr. and his ideas about curriculum since 1983. That was when I first read an essay he published in The American Scholar titled “Cultural Literacy.” I invited him to participate in a conference organized by me and Checker Finn, Jr. I urged Don Hirsch to write a book expanding his thesis, and he did. It was called Cultural Literacy, and it was a huge national bestseller.

In 1985-87, I helped to write the California History/Social Science Framework and inserted as much cultural literacy as possible, especially in the early grades. I wanted to oust the reigning ideology of “expanding environments,” which assumed that children were eager to learn about their neighborhood and community, replacing it with biographies and stories drawn from history, mythology, and timeless tales that children love.

Traub is wrong when he says that the reliance on classic children’s literature found in Rexas would not be welcome in California. I helped to plant the seeds for a similar approach in California.

In this article, Traub describes the mandated list approved by the Texas State Board of Education. It is heavily influenced by Hirsch’s ideas. I approve.

Traub writes:

This summer the Texas State Board of Education approved a mandatory reading list for public school students that includes fairy tales and nursery rhymes for little children, stories of America’s founders and Aesop’s fables for elementary schoolers, poems by Rudyard Kipling and Langston Hughes for middle schoolers and Shakespeare’s plays and Dante’s “Inferno” for high schoolers — and passages or stories from the Bible for every grade, save kindergarten.

In our highly decentralized educational system, states don’t tell teachers which books to assign — the model Texas will begin using in 2030 makes it an outlier. Yet almost all of the reaction to the list, pro and con, has centered on the Bible. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization that promotes strict separation of church and state, described the list as “a brazen promotion of religious doctrine” that threatens to convert public schools into Sunday schools.

This is a wild overreaction to what is, after all, a tiny fraction of the required readings. What’s worse, the whole debate obscures the pedagogical radicalism of what Texas has done in issuing a mandatory reading list full of classic works at all.

I spent the 2023-24 academic year in public schools across the country researching a book on civic education. I was braced for the culture war in the classroom: conservative versions of history in red states, progressive versions in blue ones. And I did see that.

What I had not expected to find was that the pedagogical and curricular problems in American schools are more damaging than the political ones. Most students, even in the well-regarded high schools I visited, knew precious little about American history and government and had only a hazy sense of chronology. Teachers in English classes complained that students would not read whole novels — and so teachers didn’t assign them.

There are many culprits for this failure, including everyone’s favorite, children’s addiction to social media. But the root of the problem lies in the way we think about teaching and learning. The view that has dominated education for several generations holds that students learn by mastering general critical-thinking skills that can be applied across disciplines and occasions. If you learn to find the main idea, you can navigate through texts. If you can recognize and articulate perspectives, you can make sense of a primary document in history.

This doctrine makes content (that is, the specific material from which these skills derive) a secondary consideration. Combined with children’s real or apparent resistance to struggling with difficult material, that leads many teachers to choose works that pose the fewest challenges or have the most surface appeal — short excerpts from classics or young adult novels about troubled teens.

Texas seeks to solve that problem not only by requiring schools across the state to teach specific books but also by choosing works that are — with some telling exceptions — rich in language, ideas and feeling. (The list is meant to constitute only part of each year’s reading curriculum; the rest will be supplied by local schools and teachers.)

More than that, the list embodies a very different pedagogical theory, one most famously propounded by E.D. Hirsch in his 1987 best-selling book, “Cultural Literacy,” and other works. Literacy, he argued, is context-specific. We become good readers and learners not by mastering generalizable skills but by acquiring the vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and stock of information that allow us to make sense of a text. A child who knows a lot about baseball will do a better job reading and summarizing a passage on baseball than a child with a higher reading level but no knowledge of the subject.

From this perspective, it is better to read a classic than a relatable contemporary story not only because one is beautiful and the other is not but also because a classic, by the very fact of its persistence over time, has become part of our shared culture. It thus increases our conversancy with all the texts from that culture. That is why it makes sense for fifth graders in Texas to read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “The Phantom Tollbooth,” “Paul Revere’s Ride” and even, speaking of baseball, “Casey at the Bat.”

Texas has also created a social studies curriculum that has received less attention. It embodies a kindred principle to the one behind the reading list: You cannot learn to think like a historian until you have gained fluency in the materials history is made of — dates, places, events, names.

Children in Texas will start studying chronological history in third grade, a time when social studies is often devoted to broad themes like community. Fifth graders will be expected to explain how the Protestant Reformation encouraged people to question religious and political authority and why Montesquieu believed in divided government and the like, according to a draft of the new curriculum.

The Texas model will not suit everyone. The state’s idea of classic literature might not pass muster in, say, California. While educators everywhere regard Pericles’ funeral oration, which Texas students are to read in high school, as a rhetorical masterpiece, they may not feel the same way about Margaret Thatcher’s eulogy for Ronald Reagan or the works of Ayn Rand and the conservative Black economist Thomas Sowell, which are also assigned. Although 53 percent of students in Texas public schools are Hispanic, the state school board included works by only a few Hispanic authors in the reading list.

Those choices reflect Texas’ conservatism. But there is nothing inherently conservative about the idea of a stipulated reading list or about the belief that children need to be exposed from an early age to great works of literature and to history taught chronologically, that they should memorize poems and speeches, that they should learn grammar. A different reading list could achieve the same goals. Cultural literacy is not a Procrustean bed: As we become more diverse and less anchored in the Western tradition, what it means to be conversant in our culture changes as well.

After my book was published, I was contacted by some of the leading philanthropic funders of public schools; they wanted to talk about how they could help improve civic education. Here’s an idea for them: Raise Texas’ bet by promoting an equally rich reading list suitable for students in blue states. Show the world that academic rigor is not just for conservatives.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Literature, Texas

Republicans Fully Cave to Trump, Todd Blanche Will Be Confirmed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
8

The confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States has been kabuki theater of sorts. We were hopeful that three Republicans had the backbone to turn down this man who has broken the Department of Justice. Surely, the Senate would not confirm a man who is so subservient to Trump. The DOJ is supposed to be at arms’-length from the President. Blanche is under Trump’s thumb.

Blanche is the one who negotiated a deal to create a $1.776 billion slush fund for insurrectionists and Trump allies as well as a sweet deal for Trump, his sons, and their business NOT to be audited by the IRS, a gift to them of at least $100 million, probably more.

I imagined that there would be outrage towards the man who refused to release the Epstein files. The guy who spent two days interviewing sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell, then arranged for her transfer to a minimum security prison where she received special treatment, as if she were a privileged guest, not a convicted pedophile.

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will vote against confirming Blanche. In Collins’ case, this is a pattern. She votes against her party only when her vote is not needed.

Most shocking are the “yes” votes of Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, and–today–Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. All three were driven out of the senate by Trump. Till is resigned because Trump threatened to primary him. The other two were primaried by Trump choices and lost.

They had reason to stand against Trump, and they had reason to have a spine. But in the end, all three caved.

And Todd Blanche will head the nation’s Justice Department, where he will continue Trump’s agenda and his vendettas.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Have You Ever Been the Victim of a Scam?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
13

I have. Three times. But fortunately I was skeptical enough not to take the bait.

A widow in Minnesota was not so lucky, although she prevailed in the end. Someone got her credit card number (a Costco-branded Visa card) and charged more than 1,700 small transactions to her account. An article in The Washington Post described her persistence in pressing Citibank to remove the charges.

Imagine you receive your credit card statement and find 32 pages of more than 1,700 unauthorized charges, made one right after another over three days. The majority of the debits are for $4.38, with about a dozen for $2.19, all to the same vendor, totaling close to $8,000.
Simple to fix, right?

Well, for one 66-year-old widow from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, getting those transactions removed became an odyssey. Her story is a warning for anyone — and that’s many of us — who ever has to dispute fraudulent activity on a credit card.

She was persistent, encountered foot-dragging, and eventually got the charges removed.

As for me, I was on the receiving end of three attempts to fall for a scam.

In the first one, I’m sitting at my desk working, and the phone rings. I pick up, and an teen boy says, “Grandma?” I say, “yes.” He says “It’s your grandson.” I’m not sure about the voice, so I say, “Which one?” He says, “Alden.” I say, “Are you okay?” He says, “Not really, I ran a red light and hit a car driven by a pregnant woman. I’m in trouble. Right now, I’m at a police station. I need bail, cash bail. $7,000.”

I said, “Did you call your mother?” He said, “I tried, she didn’t answer. Please help me. Here’s the number of the police officer who arrested me,” and he gave me a number.

Instead of calling the police officer, I called his mother. She answered right away. I told her what happened, and she said, “That’s ridiculous. Alden is in his dorm, studying for finals.”

That ended that.

The second scam occurred when I was a passenger in a car. The caller ID said that my bank was calling. I picked up, and a secretary answered. She transferred my call to a customer service representative. He asked me if I had transferred $5,000 by Zelle to someone I never heard of. I said no. He said I had been the victim of a scam, and I should follow his instructions to reverse the payment. He gave me a “case number,” which I wrote down. Then he told me to open Zelle and follow his instructions. He gave me the name of a person and a phone number. Then he said, “Write in $5,000 and press send.”

I stopped and wondered, “Why is the bank telling me to send someone $5,000? How will that help me get my money back?” I opened my bank account and saw no evidence that anyone had withdrawn $5,000, though I was on the verge of sending that amount to a stranger. A light bulb turned on, and I said to the “customer service representative,” that this call was a scam, and I would not send money to anyone.

End of that scam.

Third scam was very recent. I got an online ad for a non-prescription supplement that supposedly had a dramatic effect on cognition. The supplement reversed the tolls of aging and enabled you to improve your memory. The real inducement in the ad was that the research for the supplement was funded by Bill Gates. He spoke at length about his pursuit of this “fountain of youth” supplement. It involved honey sourced from Sardinia and other natural ingredients. At one point in the 30-minute video, Dr. Sanjay Gupta spoke enthusiastically about the product.

The product is called Memopezil.

I intended to try one bottle but the more you ordered, the lower the price, so I ordered more. When I finished ordering, another supplement popped up that was a multiplier for the first one. Etc.

As soon as I placed the order, I googled Bill Gates and Memopezil. Half a dozen websites warned that the video was a fake, that Gates had nothing to do with the supplement, and that the pitch was a scam. I immediately wrote trying to cancel my order. No response. The next day I called Amex, my credit card company, and alerted them.

Eventually, a large box was delivered to me, which I promptly returned. Eventually I got full credit. American Express is super-good in protecting its cardholders.

Three scams. Three escapes from the consequences. Have you been scammed!?

Now, I have learned to check carefully for scams before ordering. Online is loaded with alluring offers that’s fake. While writing this, I came across a claim that appeared to be on the AARP website. It said that a Japanese scientist had discovered a way to reverse dementia. Bill Gates was cited. Clint Eastwood used it and came back. But I asked Google whether it was a scam. The answer was yes.

https://youtu.be/WPDKgv5UCwU?is=wD7_ceeFDFosBvY8

Don’t believe anything until you have thoroughly vetted it.

Categories Cheating, Personal

Unprecedented: Retired Judges Act to Protect the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
1

We live in strange and dangerous times. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, the rule of law itself is under attack. Our Dear Leader has threatened judges who rule against his wishes. He and his lawless administration ignore decisions they don’t like. He installed a Supreme Court majority who were vetted by the far-right Federalist Society. That majority proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite their repeated pledges not to do so, and to gut the Voting Rights Act, terminating guarantees of equal rights for Black Americans.

At this time when the rule of law itself is disregarded by the President, who is himself ruled only by whim and self-aggrandizement, two retired judges expressed their concern in The Guardian.

Judge Michael P. Connelly and Judge Robert F. Orr wrote:

Last October, US lawyers, judges and rule-of-law advocates traveled to Warsaw as guests of the Carter Center. Neither of us was among them. But when our colleagues returned, their stories inspired us.

They told us about judges and lawyers across central Europe who had been surveilled, smeared, prosecuted and sometimes jailed for standing between political power and courts meant to remain independent.

And they kept going.

Poland’s example was especially compelling. When its government sought greater control over the judiciary, Polish judges put on their robes and marched through Warsaw. Judges from across Europe joined them in what became the March of 1,000 Robes.

Then they left their courthouses and traveled through towns and villages, explaining what an independent judiciary means to a farmer, shopkeeper, parent or business owner. They talked about law not as an abstraction, but as protection against arbitrary power.

They understood a truth Americans can no longer overlook: judicial independence cannot survive merely because judges believe in it. The public must understand why it matters.

That lesson brought us on to a bus.

Last month, shortly after the United States celebrated its 250th birthday, the Justice in Motion tour traveled from western Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Thirty sitting and retired judges, lawyers and advocates handed out pocket constitutions, met students and asked a question Americans do not consider often enough: what does the rule of law mean in everyday life, and what happens when we take it for granted?

In Columbus, we did something neither of us imagined during our years on the bench. We put on our robes and marched from the federal courthouse toward the supreme court of Ohio, carrying purple flowers, an international symbol of judicial independence.

American judges do not ordinarily march in the streets. Nor should they. The judiciary derives much of its legitimacy from restraint. Judges do not campaign for particular outcomes or answer criticism with press conferences. They speak through their decisions. But these are no ordinary times.

And our Polish colleagues taught us that silence can carry its own risk.

Our march was not about Democrats or Republicans, nor about defending particular judges or decisions. It was about defending the system that allows legal disagreements to be resolved according to law rather than political power.

One of us was elected to the supreme court of Ohio as a Democrat. The other was elected to the supreme court of North Carolina as a Republican and is now an independent. Through two long careers, we have disagreed about plenty.

That is precisely the point.

The rule of law is not a partisan possession.

Both sides enter a courtroom with the right to be heard. Judges must apply the law to the facts without regard to which party is more powerful, popular or politically useful.

Sometimes judges get it wrong. That is why we have appellate courts. Sometimes courts issue decisions that elected officials or citizens strongly dislike. That is unavoidable in a constitutional democracy.

The answer is appeal, legislation where constitutionally permissible, or constitutional amendment. It cannot be intimidation, retaliation for unpopular rulings or the suggestion that compliance with lawful court orders is optional.

Once adherence to judicial decisions depends upon whether the politically powerful agree with them, we have left the rule of law behind.

In Wooster, Ohio, about 150 people gathered across from the historic courthouse. The discussion was not about red America or blue America. It was about ordinary life.

The rule of law is why you can deposit money in a bank and expect it to be there tomorrow. It is why contracts mean something, property can be protected and an individual citizen can enter a courthouse and challenge the government.

These protections seem ordinary only because generations before us built institutions strong enough to make them ordinary. When the rule of law works, it is almost invisible.

Judges are trained – rightly – to exercise restraint. During our years on the bench, we spoke through our rulings. That tradition is essential to maintaining confidence in an impartial judiciary.

But restraint should not be confused with silence about the survival of the institution itself.

When judges are threatened because of their rulings; when an adverse decision is answered not with an appeal but with demands for retaliation; when courts are judged legitimate only when they produce politically desired outcomes, those who understand the system have an obligation to explain what is being lost.

Our Polish friends understood this before we did. Their circumstances differ from ours, and comparisons should be made carefully. But the lesson travels well.

The rule of law does not defend itself. Neither does an independent judiciary. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless citizens and public officials possess the courage and habits necessary to honor them.

Four days on a bus will not persuade a nation. The purpose was more modest: to begin conversations, one community and one citizen at a time, about institutions Americans have been fortunate enough to take for granted.

That work belongs not only to judges and lawyers, but to all of us.

The rule of law is not something judges possess. It is something citizens inherit.

And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.

What’s giving us hope now

Justice Robert F Orr (retired): What gives me hope is the scope of individuals and groups now focusing and talking about the rule of law and the independence of our judiciary. Our bus trip had a great mix of backgrounds and experience both in the judges participating and meeting us at stops as well as the young people who amplified the message across various media platforms. It’s genuinely a national movement.

Justice Michael P Donnelly (retired): What gives me hope is the genuine appreciation we encountered during the bus tour for the role of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights and civil liberties. The people we met understood that these freedoms, defended at great sacrifice throughout our history, cannot be taken for granted – and that each generation must be willing to stand up for them.

  • Michael P Donnelly is a retired justice of the supreme court of Ohio
  • Robert F Orr is a retired justice of the supreme court of North Carolina. Both participated in the Justice in Motion tour organized by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Justice, Trump

Benjamin R. Cremer: A Christian Case for Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
1

Benjamin Cremer was raised in a strict fundamentalist home in Idaho and home-schooled. He became an Evangelical Christian minister. Several years ago, he began to question his church and eventually was expelled. He is now affiliated with the Wesleyans and keeps asking hard questions.

He wrote:

On June 26th, the Trump Administration’s Religious Liberty Commission released a draft report calling for a reexamination of the traditional understanding of separation between church and state. The report argues that religion and government should be viewed as partners rather than distinct institutions and recommends expanding the role of religious expression within public life and government institutions. Supporters see these proposals as necessary protections for religious freedom.

Others, however, have expressed serious concerns. They warn that when government begins treating religion as an essential partner rather than maintaining neutrality among faiths, the rights of religious minorities, dissenting Christians, and nonreligious citizens become more vulnerable. History repeatedly demonstrates that when governments become closely aligned with a dominant religious tradition, those outside that tradition often find their freedoms diminished.

From a Christian perspective, this concern should not be dismissed lightly. The church has often suffered most when political power became intertwined with religious authority. The same New Testament that calls believers to proclaim Christ boldly also presents a church that transformed the world without controlling the state. The earliest Christians did not seek privileged status within the Roman Empire. They sought faithfulness to Jesus.

For this reason, many Christians continue to defend the separation of church and state not because they want less Christianity in society, but because they want the church to remain free from political control and governments to remain free from religious domination. They recognize that religious liberty is strongest when government protects the freedom of all faiths rather than privileging one faith over others.

The Historical Problem

Few ideas are more misunderstood in modern American politics than the separation of church and state. Many people hear the phrase and assume it means separating God from public life, silencing religious voices, or forcing faith into the private sphere. Historically, however, the principle emerged largely because Christians had experienced the dangers of governments controlling religion and religions controlling governments.

The separation of church and state is not an attack on Christianity. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest protections Christianity has ever received.

For most of history, governments and religions were deeply intertwined. In ancient Egypt, rulers were often considered divine. In the Roman Empire, religious devotion and political loyalty were fused together. Citizens honored the gods not merely as a matter of personal belief but as an act of civic responsibility. Religious conformity was seen as essential to social stability and national prosperity. 

The earliest Christians lived within this system. Their refusal to participate in emperor worship and sacrifices to the Roman gods was viewed as dangerous. They were often accused of undermining the social order because they would not give ultimate allegiance to the empire’s religious expectations. The church began as a minority movement that understood firsthand the dangers of state-controlled religion.

Ironically, after Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, many Christians began wielding the very power that had once been used against them. Over the centuries, state churches often persecuted dissenters, imprisoned religious minorities, punished heresy through civil law, and sometimes used violence to enforce theological conformity.

Catholics persecuted Protestants. Protestants persecuted Catholics. Both often persecuted smaller Christian groups such as Anabaptists, who were the most persecuted set of Christians during both the Protestant reformation and Catholic counter reformation. The result was centuries of religious conflict throughout Europe.

One of the most devastating examples was the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict fueled in part by religious and political rivalries that killed millions and left large portions of Central Europe devastated.

The lesson became increasingly clear that when governments gain authority over religion, faith becomes vulnerable to political manipulation. When churches gain governmental power, the temptation to coerce rather than persuade becomes difficult to resist.

The American Experiment

The founders of the United States were deeply aware of this history. Although many founders held religious beliefs themselves, they also understood the dangers of establishing a national church.

The First Amendment begins with two related protections: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These two principles work together. The government may not establish or favor a particular religion. At the same time, the government may not interfere with citizens freely practicing their faith. This arrangement was not designed to weaken religion. It was designed to protect it.

Many of the strongest advocates for religious liberty were Christians themselves. One of the most important was Roger Williams, a Baptist minister who argued that government involvement in religion corrupts both institutions. He famously described a “wall of separation” that protected the church from the state as much as it protected the state from the church. For Williams, faith must be freely chosen. Genuine belief cannot be compelled by political power.

The New Testament Perspective

The New Testament offers remarkable support for this principle.

Jesus consistently resisted attempts to merge God’s kingdom with political domination. When crowds wanted to make him king by force, he withdrew. When questioned about Roman taxes, he responded, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Before Pontius Pilate, Jesus declared that his kingdom was “not from this world.”

Probably the most remarkable example is Jesus refusing the temptation from Satan to have power over all the kingdoms of the world, which would have been the entire Roman Empire at the time. Jesus refused because he didn’t come to seek power over others for himself, which is how earthly empires operate. He came to bring and share the power of God with the world. 

This did not mean that Jesus was unconcerned with public life. His teachings had profound social and political implications. Rather, it meant that God’s kingdom advances through witness, service, truth, sacrifice, and love, not through coercion and control. The earliest Christians transformed the world without controlling the state. They cared for the poor. They welcomed strangers. They rescued abandoned infants. They crossed ethnic and social boundaries. They proclaimed Christ as Lord. They did all of this while possessing little political power. Their influence came through faithful witness, not governmental authority.

Why This Matters Today

The separation of church and state remains essential because the temptation that confronted Christians throughout history still exists.

Whenever Christianity becomes closely tied to political power, faith risks becoming a tool for preserving social status, cultural dominance, or national identity. That is exactly what we are seeing today. Christian Nationalism has accepted the temptation that Jesus rejected, to have power over the kingdoms of this world. 

A Neo-evangelical sect of Christianity that runs the Heritage Foundation, is seeking to inject its own brand of Christianity over everyone else in our nation, even over other kinds of Christians. It is seeking to not only define what is truly “American” but what is truly “Christian.” This will inevitably lead to the erosion of of both civil and religious liberties. This also opens the door for other religious groups to control high positions of power in the future. However, my hunch is the Heritage Foundation and company don’t plan on releasing the controls any time soon, so they aren’t worried about another religious group gaining power over them.

When the church fuses itself with the nationstate, it begins to ask different questions. Instead of asking, “Are we being faithful to Jesus?” It asks, “Are we winning?”

Instead of asking, “How do we love our neighbors?” It asks, “How do we maintain control?”

Instead of measuring success by loving God and our neighbors as ourselves, it measures success by influence.

History repeatedly demonstrates that when Christianity becomes fused with state power, the result is often harmful both to the church and to society. The church becomes less prophetic because it becomes invested in protecting power.

The state becomes less just because it begins favoring particular religious groups over others. Both institutions are weakened.

Separation Is Not Silence

Defending the separation of church and state does not require Christians to withdraw from public life. Christians should vote. Christians should advocate for justice. Christians should speak about moral issues. Christians should serve in public office. Christians should bring their convictions into public conversations.

The principle simply means that government should not establish, privilege, enforce, or coerce religious belief. Faith flourishes best when it is freely embraced rather than politically imposed.

A Christian Defense

Ultimately, the separation of church and state is not rooted in hostility toward Christianity. It is rooted in humility.

It recognizes that the church is at its best when it relies on the power of the Spirit rather than the power of the sword. It recognizes that authentic faith cannot be manufactured through legislation. It recognizes that governments make poor churches and churches make poor governments.

Most importantly, it recognizes that Jesus never instructed his followers to seize political power in order to build the Kingdom of God. He instructed them to take up their cross, love their neighbors, serve the vulnerable, tell the truth, and follow him. The church’s greatest strength has never been its proximity to power.

Its greatest strength has always been its faithfulness to Christ.

Now I’d like to hear from you!

Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

Taxpayers Foot the Medical Bills for Low-Wage Employees of Walmart, Amazon

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
3

Judd Legum at Popular Information excels at exposing scandals, many of which are in plain view. In this post, he reveals what many people have long suspected: About 10% of the employees at Walmart and Amazon qualify for public subsidies for Medicaid because they are so poorly paid. Meanwhile, the owners of Walmart and Amazon are multi-billionaires. Why don’t they pay wages that are enough to keep their employees off public subsidies?

Judd writes:

American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the largest and most profitable companies in the country — collectively generating $100 billion in profits in 2025 — but many of their employees still qualify for Medicaid because their take-home pay hovers around (or below) the poverty line.

As taxpayers keep their workers afloat, the wealth of the two companies’ largest shareholders is increasing exponentially. The Walton family, the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their collective wealth increase from $238 billion in 2021 to $513 billion at the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his net worth increase from $187 billion to $255 billion over roughly the same time period.

Popular Information calculated the public subsidy to Amazon and Walmart by cross-referencing several publicly available data sources. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. This provided state-level Medicaid enrollment for Amazon and Walmart workers in all six states, with the exception of Amazon in Maine.

Popular Information compared these figures to the total number of employees working for Walmart and Amazon in each state, sourced from company disclosures, to establish an average Medicaid enrollment rate for each company. The average Medicaid enrollment rate was then used to establish an estimated Medicaid enrollment for employees of each company in the remaining states.

Finally, the estimated number of employees receiving Medicaid in each state was multiplied by that state’s average annual cost of a non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid enrollee, as published by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).

Using this methodology, Popular Information estimates that, nationwide, over 156,000 Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicaid at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $1.04 billion.

This figure significantly understates the true cost of Medicaid for Walmart employees to taxpayers. First, the calculation only includes the direct cost of Medicaid for the employees themselves. But Walmart’s low wages for these employees also makes their families eligible for Medicaid. Taking into account dependents, the cost to taxpayers would roughly double. Further, the most recent data on Medicaid cost per enrollee from MACPAC is from fiscal year 2023. Costs for 2025 and 2026 are likely significantly higher.

In Walmart’s 2026 fiscal year, then-CEO Doug McMillon was paid over $29.2 million in total compensation while the median Walmart worker earned $30,520 — a ratio of 958 to 1. The earnings of an average worker put them well below the cutoff for Medicaid eligibility for a family of three.

For Amazon, the same methodology finds that an estimated 123,000 Amazon employees are enrolled in Medicaid at a cost to taxpayers of $927 million.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was given a massive compensation package of $212 million in 2021, mostly in stock that vests over 10 years. Jassy’s compensation has been smaller since; he was paid another $2.1 million in 2024. Meanwhile, the median Amazon employee earned $40,206 that year. This global number includes the many higher-paid technical employees who work at Amazon. Warehouse workers in the United States, and others in blue collar positions, make much less, making them eligible for Medicaid.

“Amazon is one of the largest job creators in the country, so looking at raw numbers instead of percentages is misleading,” an Amazon spokesman said in response to Popular Information’s request for comment. “Also, eligibility for both SNAP and Medicaid is based on total household income and family size, not individual wages or benefits – so employers that offer part-time options for those who want them, like we do, are likely to have more people who are eligible.”

While Walmart ranked first in terms of “raw numbers” of employees on Medicaid, Amazon had a higher percentage of its workforce on Medicaid (11.7%) than Walmart (9.4%).

Not everyone who works parttime does so by choice. In June 2026, 4.7 million “individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, according to the GAO, 66.1% of employed individuals on Medicaid work full-time.

Walmart declined to comment on the record. According to the company’s corporate website, starting wages at Walmart have increased by 93% since 2015.

Categories Billionaires, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Health, Medicine

Robert Kuttner: Republicans Cave to Trump Again

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
0

Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect is disgusted by the capitulation of Senators Cornyn and Tillis on their vote for Todd Blanche. The two held out until Blanche gave them a signed piece of paper that is utterly meaningless.

There are many reasons to oppose Blanche: he has utterly politicized the Department of Justice, making it totally subservient to Trump. He has continued to act as Trump’s personal lawyer, not as the nation’s chief defender of the rule of law.

Blanche was ordered by Congress last December to release all the Epstein files. He released about half of them, heavily redacted to protect the names of the predators. He has conspired with Trump to free the Insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. He reacted to Trump’s absurd lawsuit seeking $10 billion from the Treasury Department by signing off on a $1.776 billion fund for Trump’s allies, friends, and insurrectionists. More consequentially, he signed an agreement with Trump in which he pledged that Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and various Trump friends would not be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Since Trump owes the IRS about $100 million, this is a sweetheart deal for him.

Trump collected over $2.2 billion in income in 2025, but his avarice is never satisfied.

Kuttner writes about the collapse of opposition by Senators Cornyn and Tillis.

Blanche’s nomination will be voted in by the Senate next Tuesday. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she will vote no; her Senate race in a blue state needs a boost. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she will vote. It takes only two votes to sink Blanche.

The problem is that Trump will find someone even worse!

Kuttner writes:

Over the weekend, it looked as if President Trump had backed himself into a corner in his efforts to get Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was recently primaried by Trump ally Ken Paxton yet remains a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the rest of the year, wasn’t budging in his insistence that Blanche commit in writing to killing the corrupt deal in which the government set up a $1.776 billion slush fund to compensate supposed victims of government violence and Trump personally got immunity from IRS audits.

Trump himself poured oil on the flames in a series of comments and social media posts in which he walked back his previous commitment to end the slush fund and further insulted Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was following Cornyn’s lead.

Tillis, who had previously signaled his support for Blanche, then posted a withering comment on X: “Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks …”

The two holdout senators had little to lose. Both are leaving Congress this year. Both were dispatched in part by Trump’s hostility. Trump made clear that he would not support Tillis’s re-election, so Tillis decided to retire. Trump explicitly endorsed Cornyn’s challenger, despite Cornyn’s decade-long record of dogged loyalty to Trumpism.

So quite apart from principled objections to the deal, there is little love lost between the two lame-duck senators and Trump. But then, Sunday night, the waves parted. After extended conversations with Blanche, Cornyn agreed to support his nomination. And the details of the deal reeked.

Though Blanche posted on social media a signed memo formally rescinding the order that created the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” he left most of the IRS deal intact. Trump still gets full immunity from IRS audits of past tax returns, and the scope of the immunity is narrowed to protect “only” Trump, the Trump Organization, and two of his sons. And once Blanche is confirmed, some version of the slush fund could be resurrected at any time.

Somehow, disgracefully, this satisfied Cornyn and Tillis. It’s far from clear, however, that it will satisfy U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams. Back in May, Judge Williams voided an earlier version of the IRS deal. In a scathing ruling on July 13, she threatened a formal ethics complaint against Blanche for conflicts of interest and misrepresentations. “In sum,” she wrote, “the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail.”

The Judiciary Committee has now scheduled a vote Tuesday to advance Blanche’s nomination to the Senate floor. But this isn’t quite over.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Will a Fascist, Racist, Anti-Semite Win a Major Election in Texas?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
5

Bo French is an uber-bigot who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Don’t be misled by the title. The Railroad Commission has very little to do with railroads. It oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas and wields enormous power over an essential industry.

You might want to learn about Bo French, because he is running for an important statewide seat. Also because he voices the sentiments of the dark underbelly of American political life.

The Texas Monthly reports on the ascent of a native fascist:

Last week Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Railroad Commission of Texas, sent out a bizarre fundraising email. Framed as a reminder of the 108th anniversary of the Communist overthrow of Russia, the email included an AI-generated image of his Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, smiling in the chambers where the country’s then-ruling Romanov family was executed in 1918. Rosenthal, French’s campaign continued, has “much in common with the Marxist revolutionaries who brutally executed” the Romanovs, and has plans for his own “infernal revolution” of Texas. “My opponent has spent his time in office mocking Christianity, the Virgin Birth, and Christian Communion, while voting against religious liberty and for the spread of Islam,” the email continued. 

If you’re wondering what, exactly, a century-old Russian coup has to do with the railroad commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, then you’re likely not alone. But among a small audience—those attuned to white supremacist dog whistles—the accusation almost certainly perked up some ears. 

You see, Rosenthal is Jewish. And while French did not explicitly name the Bolshevik revolutionaries who overthrew Russia a century ago, the email appears to be nodding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims there is a Jewish Communist cabal intent on controlling the world and stamping out Christianity. Known as Judeo-Bolshevism, the theory was crucial to Adolf Hitler’s rise and a key justification for the Holocaust. It remains central to the worldviews of many modern fascists, who maintain that communism—and, by extension, immigration—are tools used by Jews to destroy the West and white people.  

In a statement to Texas Monthly, Rosenthal called French’s post “true to form.” The Texas House member from the Houston area and longtime mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry continued: “While I’m working on substantive solutions for the people of Texas and our energy grid, his whole campaign is about pejorative and racist attacks.” 

Neither French nor his campaign responded this week to numerous requests for an interview, or to clarify whether he intended to invoke the conspiracy theory. But his other recent posts make clear he has a deep familiarity with esoteric racist views that were once largely confined to fringe corners of the far right. 

This week, in response to a video that purported to show nonwhite people trespassing in a restricted part of Yellowstone National Park, French posted a quote from “The Camp of the Saints”—an obscure French dystopian novel that depicts immigrants as diseased, feces-eating hordes and has enjoyed a recent resurgence among the global white nationalist movement. “Your universe has no meaning to them,” French wrote on X to his 80,000 followers, without revealing the source of the quote. “They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door . . .”

Citing fears of “gay race communism,” an impending “massacre of heritage Americans,” and the nation ending up like modern South Africa, French has called for the United States to “be Rhodesia,” the African pseudostate in the sixties and seventies in which Black people were violently oppressed by a ruling white minority. Rhodesia has inspired numerous racist killers—most infamously Dylann Roof, the self-described “Last Rhodesian” who massacred nine Black congregants at a South Carolina church in 2015.

“We are all Rhodesians now,” French wrote in January. 

It wasn’t long ago that such views were largely relegated to the online backwater of the neo-Nazi movement or manifestos left by fascist mass shooters, according to Wendy Via, a veteran researcher of the far right and cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They are well-known to people who study extremism,” Via told me. “But they’re not well-known to even your average racist. These are the ideological basis for the white supremacist movement.” 

Even if they’re not yet widely accepted, she said, such views are slowly being normalized by President Donald Trump, the scaling back of moderation on many social media websites, and the proliferation of the “great replacement” theory—which claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to demographically replace white people in Western countries. In May, for instance, Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander-at-large under Trump, spoke to a global conference of neo-Nazi-affiliated activists and extreme far-right political figures who had gathered in support of the “remigration” movement, which seeks to forcibly remove people of color, including legal citizens, from their countries. (Detractors have another name for such efforts: “ethnic cleansing.”) 

In Texas, French has been a key purveyor of similarly extreme rhetoric, and he helped make anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry mainstream in the broader state GOP. He’s called for 100 million people—nearly a third of the American population—to be deported, and for two nonwhite Texas House members to be stripped of their citizenship and removed from the country. He wants some Native Americans—“third world savages”—to be kicked out of America too. French says Texas needs to “ban Islam” and “round upevery Muslim” for deportation. Last week he toldhis followers it was “time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!” McCarthyism and the Christian Crusades, he argues, didn’t go far enough. And this week he referred to America’s “not in labor force” population—an economic term for nonworkers that includes retirees, students, and those with serious handicaps—as “low IQ parasites.” 

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Racism, Texas
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