U.S. House Defies Republican Leaders, Votes for Sanctions on Russia, Aid for Ukraine

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2026 //
0

Half a dozen Republicans and one independent joined Democrats to authorize a start to aid to Ukraine and sanctions for Russia. They defied not only the Republican leadership, but Trump, who does not want to help Ukraine and has eased sanctions on Russia.

This has been a bad couple of days for Trump. He lost his $1.776 billion slush fund for his allies; Congress will not pay $1 billion for his ballroom; the House passed a War Powers Act to limit his war in Iran. It takes just a few Republican votes to block his authoritarian wishes.

Robert Jimison of The New York Times reported:

Defying Republican leaders, the House voted on Wednesday to take up a bill to impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia and provide additional aid to Ukraine, after a bloc of G.O.P. defectors joined Democrats in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Moscow more than four years into the war.

The bill, which still must win passage in the House, faces a difficult path to enactment, given divisions in the Senate over a sanctions package and objections from the White House. President Trump has repeatedly signaled he does not want Congress constraining his flexibility to negotiate directly with Moscow, and could veto the legislation if it reaches his desk.

Still, the 218-to-204 vote to take it up, in which six Republicans and one independent who normally votes with them crossed party lines to side with Democrats, sent a clear signal of bipartisan pressure on the matter. It added to a growing list of issues on which the Republican-led Congress has in recent weeks shown a greater willingness to challenge Mr. Trump, including the war with Iran, his push to fund a new White House ballroom and a bid to create a federal fund to benefit his political allies.

The legislation’s centerpiece is a broad package of sanctions targeting Russia’s oil and gas sector that is aimed at striking at the Kremlin’s primary source of wartime revenue. Lawmakers in both parties have argued for more than a year that sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies have failed to fully sever the energy revenues that continue to bankroll Moscow’s war effort.

The bill would expand restrictions on financial institutions that conduct business with sanctioned Russian officials and state enterprises and seek to crack down on entities that help Moscow evade existing sanctions. It also would target international organizations, companies, banks and governments that continue doing business with sanctioned Russian entities, provisions primarily aimed at actors in China, Central Asia and other jurisdictions that have helped Russia circumvent Western restrictions.

And the legislation would eliminate a sanctions waiver President Trump approved earlier this year that provided limited relief.

It would authorize roughly $1.8 billion in direct spending and more than $8 billion in loans for Ukraine’s war effort as the country continues to face deadly bombardment in Kyiv and other areas.

The bill languished for more than a year as Republican leaders on the House Foreign Affairs Committee declined to take it up, preventing lawmakers from debating and amending it.

That prompted Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the committee’s top Democrat, to turn to a procedural maneuver known as a discharge petition, which allows rank-and-file lawmakers to bypass the leadership and force a bill to the House floor if it gains the support of a majority of members.

The bill must pass the House and pass the Senate. Trump might veto it.

But it shows that Trump’s iron control of his party is slipping.

Categories Democrats, International, Republicans, Trump

Timothy Snyder on “Superpower Suicide”

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2026 //
1

Timothy Snyder is an expert on European history. He taught for many years at Yale University and held a prestigious chair in European history. In 2025, he accepted a chair at the University of Toronto. His Substack blog is titled “Thinking About…” This important essay appeared in May 9. Nothing Snyder says here has changed.

He wrote:

The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.

On April 20th I was asked to speak in New York about ethics and power. My thinking, which I expressed in a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this little video, and in the media, was that our utterly unethical war was also utterly self-destructive. The war, a catastrophe in itself, suggests the guiding principle of Trump foreign policy: superpower suicide. The term was since come into more general use, and readers have been asking me to spell it out.

Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.

It is hard to see this clearly. Even as we oppose individual Trump adventures, we hope that in some way they are based on some understanding of the national interest. They are not. To get the perspective we need to see the nature of this anti-strategic self-slaughter, it will help to consider thirteen traditional bases of state power.

1. Statehood. A superpower must, at a minimum, be a modern state. This means that it must be an arrangement that includes, via law and other institutions, a larger body of citizens within a common endeavor. There is no sign that the Trump administration regards the United States of America as a state. It treats the existence of the United States as a commercial opportunity for a select few people, American and otherwise.

2. National interest. Another minimal requirement of superpower would be a sense of why that power must be used. The Trump administration exhibits no interest in the good of the people. Theorists of international relations have differed as to how leaders understand national interests; we are intellectually unprepared, however, for a situation in which the leader simply does not care about either the state or the nation.

3. Succession. Again, for a state to maintain itself as a superpower, it must maintain itself over time. The basic requirement of such continuity is a succession principle, a means by which authority is transferred from some people to other people while institutions continue to function. In the United States, democracy enables succession. Historically, there are means of succession, for example by dynasty (or dynastic adoption, as in second-century Rome) or by the decision of a politburo, as in China or the USSR (in the US this would be a capitalist politburo, the sort of oligarchical coven that got us JD Vance). Getting from democracy to such different arrangements would end the American republic. Trump aspires to stay in power indefinitely, and says so. By putting the vote in question, he puts America in question, and thus American power.

4. Elites. For states to thrive and to accumulate and maintain power, the right people have to be in charge. There is no perfect means to achieve this, and there is the inevitable tension, as the Roman Stoics and others have noted, between the skills needed to rise to the top and those suited to serving some general interest. And those who rise to a position of authority will try to pass it on to their children; the Roman Catholic Church went to the extreme of insisting on priestly celibacy to block this tendency. Historically, powerful states seek ways to enable qualified people to serve in positions of authority, regardless of birth. Ancient China had an examination system. Napoleon established the principle of merit in both civilian and military life. The United States had a civil service that was the envy of the world as well as a military that was its most meritocratic institution. The Trump administration has chosen to disable the civil service and to purge the military command of people of quality. This process has been carried out by people who are themselves wildly unqualified to hold any sort of office, let along cabinet positions. To see where we are, we must understand that people such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, about whom one might raise other objections, had no business accepting their nominations, since they lack any qualifications. The fact that such people could be considered, let alone appointed, is a marker of superpower suicide.

5. Education. In a deeper sense, a superpower must have a mechanism to refresh its society, and thus its politics and administration, by preparing its population to understand the challenges of the world. This administration has done the contrary. University students are forbidden to gather and to speak their minds; university administrations are threatened with retaliation if they allow their faculty to teach freely; libraries around the country, including in military academies, are purged of useful books; public education generally is replaced with scams whereby tax money is transferred from the poorer to the richer while schools themselves are starved; an unregulated internet is allowed and indeed encouraged to transform the public sphere into a realm of emotions and recriminations.

6. Science. The rise of great powers often involves an alliance between politics and science. The ancient Mesopotamians were astronomers whose systems of describing the heavens still mark our ways of thought; so were the Mayans. The Romans managed to operationalize Greek science to build, defend, and cure. The Renaissance was, by no coincidence, also the age of exploration. Modern imperial powers built state institutions to fund science and attract scientists; the United States from the 1940s was the outstanding example of this trend, and science (often as practiced by immigrants) was the most important basis of American superpower. Current American policy is to fund science on the basis of primitive ideological taboos, and to discourage young scientists from immigrating to the United States. Senior scientists are also leaving; a colleague in a central position in US science just told me that he is leaving the country in part because the overall environment is better in other places. It is also US policy to cast doubt on basic scientific observations, such as that of human-caused climate change.

7. Energy. Human groups that pioneer new forms of energy technology rise; those that do not fall. This might be the most profound truth of our history; a magnificent forthcoming bookdemonstrates the significance of energy transitions at the most profound level, that of the history of life on earth itself. Humans who mastered fire could consume more energy themselves. Humans who domesticated dogs could use their energy to hunt mammoths. Humans who domesticated plants could turn solar energy to their own purposes. Humans who understood weather and climate could turn wind energy to the purpose of exploration and conquest, as did the Vikings. The United States was established on the cusp of a transition to hydrocarbon energy: coal, oil, natural gas. These forms of energy are now becoming obsolete, not only in ecological but also in economic terms. And yet this administration has chosen to cancel America’s energy transition and subsidize technologies that have no future. This is superpower suicide in perhaps the most basic form. And nothing could benefit America’s chief rival, China, more than this choice.

8. Technology. It requires little effort to associate technology with the rise of great powers. Military achievement is associated intimately with innovation; from the spur to the machine gun, the causal relationship is not really contestable. While the United States spends gigantic amounts of money on weaponry, the Trump administration has chosen to focus on weapons from the past rather than of the future. Trump’s idea is battleships named after himself based on what he remembers of a movie. The plans for “Trump-class” battleships are a mixture of the fictional and the vulnerable, which does reflect the man. The notion is to invest untold amounts of money into a kind of weapon has been understood to be obsolete since 1943, and which if somehow built would be highly vulnerable to weapons other countries now have. This strategic atavism draws the United States away from national security in its most basic sense. The shape of modern warfare is revealed by the high-tech war between Russia and Ukraine, especially in Ukraine’s successful self-defense. The Trump administration chose to ignore the lessons of that war and to demean and defund America’s Ukrainian ally, to the detriment of American interests and American warfighting.

9. Diplomacy. This art, celebrated by great powers, has been trashed by the United States. It cannot be practiced without understanding other countries, as the most focused American diplomats have stressed (for example, Henry Kissinger, who can hardly be excused of softheartedness). It has rested, in the American and other cases, on the deliberate construction of a diplomatic corps where people train in languages and trade in knowledge. Under the Trump administration, the foreign service has been trashed. The principle of diplomacy, such as it is, is that other countries will do what we want because we are big and bad. This has not worked. The bizarre notion that the president can himself “make deals” is the sign of a religious cult; like most cults, its activity is the generation of ever more creative excuses for the lack of performance. There is no evidence that Trump knows how to negotiate, and abundant evidence that he does not: for example, defeat in trade wars with China; personal vulnerability to the preferences of Russian leaders, and the disaster of Iranian nuclear enrichment, of which Trump himself is the chief sponsor. In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. The diplomacy of the Huns was far more sophisticated than this. It is hard to overstate how primitive the current American approach is, and how much joy it brings to America’s enemies.

10. Alliances. Great powers have allies. To be sure, they might change these alliances rapidly for reasons of interest, as the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire famously did. The whole history of the Roman Empire, for that matter, was one of active diplomacy with neighboring barbarians (as the Romans saw matters); archaeology bears witness to the arrangements that were made. The history of modern European empires was also one considered alliances, as the architects of American superpower understood. Under the Trump administration, useful allies are mocked and marginalized for no reason other than personal whimsy and a sense of grievance. Because there is no sense of state or national interest, there can be no understanding that alliances are of service. Trump feels annoyed because he is losing a war and removes US troops from Germany; those troops are there to enable the United States to win wars. I personally cannot think of any other example in which the leaders of a great power behaved in this way, presumably because these kinds of choices are inconsistent with the maintenance of power. The United States now seems to be treating as “allies” middle eastern countries that have nothing to offer except their own interests in the use of American armed forces in their own region, permanent engagement in the disastrous politics of oil, and financial opportunities for people personally close to Trump.

11. The international system. Postwar America did something far more impressive than build a system of alliances; it essentially created a set of laws, rules, and norms that allowed American power to maintain itself and to expand. The European Union and NATO, so abused by the Trump people today, were indirect and direct results of American policies intelligently designed to maximize American trade and security interests. But the achievement was far broader than that, and indeed historically unprecedented: the construction of laws and conventions that kept one country in the center of the world. Today, the Trump people make themselves at the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference and similar gatherings and complaining that the rules are against them — the exact opposite was the case, because America made the rules. In deliberately destroying its own international system, this American government is improving the position of its rivals China and Russia, who have been calling for exactly this to happen, but who lacked the ability to make it happen.

12. The idea of victory. A superpower wins in confrontations, at least some of the time. This administration loses again and again, and is seen to lose by others. Trump announced that his main weapon of influence would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China, leaving Beijing more powerful and more emboldened. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a curious case. It would serve the interests of the United States in prosperity and stability for Ukraine to win; but under Trump the United States has switched its policy to one of support for Ukraine to support for Russia. So it has lost in that way. But since the United States has made that pivot, Ukraine has performed ever better in the war, and Russia has performed worse. And so the United States, amazingly, has managed to be the loser in the same war a double sense: by failing to see its own interests, and then by failing to fail. The Iranian war is an obvious strategic defeat in every traditional sense; insofar as there were any American objectives, they were not achieved. Trump’s policies have left Iran with more enriched uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new sources of economic power in the world. In the current situation, in which military options have been self-humiliatingly exhausted, the useful instruments would be those that involved communicating with the Iranian people or influencing Iranian society. Those institutions existed until very recently; they were willfully demolished, to great fanfare, in early 2026.

The United States is now governed by people who celebrate defeat in symbolic terms characteristic of states in disastrous decline. Consider Defense Secretary Hegseth’s description of the rescue of a US pilot as the resurrection of Jesus. The screaming blasphemy of this might distract us from its strategic helplessness. Christological images of this sort are used as propaganda to transform defeat in the real world into victory in some imaginary one. The US lost the war in Iran. Among other things it was not able to sustain an air campaign. The downing of a US fighter meant than an individual mission failed. It is happy news, of course, that the pilot survived. But the notion that this was a “literal miracle,” as Hegseth claimed, brings the United States, sadly, into the tradition of losers who use Jesus to claim to be winners. An historical example of this was Polish Romanticism, with its idea that the collapse of a republic (chiefly due to wealth inequality) made of Poland the “Christ of Nations.” Donald Trump’s own self-deification has to be seen in similar terms: a president who could assert power in this world would not have to claim that his real authority comes from another one. His fantasies of the total destruction of Iranian civilization are part of an apocalyptic panorama that is inconsistent with decent politics.

13. Finances. Though not the most interesting historical subject, budget disaster stands behind many of the most notable collapses of state power, ancient and modern. Under Trump our national debt now approaches $40 trillion. National debt is higher than GDP of the country for the first time since the end of the Second World War. That is a notable point of comparison: it is normal to run big deficits when facing the challenge of the scale of a world war. We are running huge deficits for an entirely different reason: because we decline to tax wealthy individuals and corporations. That is not an approach that is consistent with fighting and winning wars, nor with maintaining the social services that allow a modern society to function. More profoundly: it reflects an approach to politics — government as customer service to the very wealthy — that leads us from power to ethics.

The war can lead us to a diagnosis of superpower suicide. Wars cannot be won by people who have no idea what they are doing, because they have no frame of reference (such as the nation or the state) beyond their own feelings. They cannot be fought well when the wrong people are making the daily decisions and the wrong weapons are being deployed. They cannot be reasonably brought to an end when there is no practice of diplomacy and no notion of the value of alliances and no concern about corruption.

But even a strict focus on power will lead us back to justice. But just as the war is only a symptom of superpower suicide, so superpower suicide is only a symptom of a still deeper condition, the one that must be addressed.

Even if all we cared about were American power, we would have to ask ourselves how to undo the distortions of democracy and the drastic inequalities of that enabled world-historical levels of strategic buffoonery. After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable.

The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.

*****

PS. If you would like to help Ukrainians defend themselves from Russia’s criminal war of aggression, please consider contributing to the Sky Defense campaign. For worse but also for better, as the Ukrainians have shown us, this is a time when civil society campaigns can contribute to general security.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, International, Lies, Science, Stupid, Technology, Trump, Tyranny

Judge J. Michael Luttig: The Peculiar Philosophy of Justice Clarence Thomas

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2026 //
3

J. Michael Luttig is a respected conservative legal scholar who was appointed to be a federal appeals court judge by President George H.W. Bush. He served for 15 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1981 to 2006. In 2020, he advised Vice-President Mike Pence that he had no constitutional authority to overturn the presidential election. He is an outspoken critic of Trump. In 2024, he voted for Kamala Harris.

In this post, Judge Luttig critiques a speech that Justice Clarence Thomas delivered in late April to the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas. It was supposed to be a speech about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Justice Thomas expressed the bizarre idea that progressivism is at odds with the ideals of the Declation of Independence. He described progressivism as the demonic ideology that is responsible for the great evils of the past century. Justice Thomas connected progressivism to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Mussolini.

Here is a video. Here is a transcript.

Law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky analyzed his speech here.

Ruth Marcus, former editorial writer for The Washington Post, critiqued his upside/down version of history in The New Yorker.

Judge J. Michael Luttig joined many who were critical of Justice Thomas’s understanding of history and of progressivism.

He wrote:

The speech exe that Justice Clarence Thomas gave last week at the University of Texas could prove to be the single most important speech of political and constitutional philosophy that never should have been given.

As a conservative my entire life, I certainly wish Justice Thomas had not written and given the insidious speech.

Though his unmistakable targets were Progressives and progressivism, his speech is far more injurious to Republicans, conservatives, and conservatism than it is for progressivism because it is demonstrably and inarguably wrong as to Progressives, but it is a siren song to today’s Republicans and conservatives. Webster’s Dictionary defines “siren song” as “: an alluring utterance or appeal, especially one that is seductive or deceptive.”

Justice Thomas intended his speech as a Republican and conservative manifesto for our times — and for all times. But the political and constitutional philosophies he described and embraced are neither doctrinal conservatism nor Republican nor political conservatism, and they are manifestly not constitutional conservatism.

No one should mistake for true conservatism, or even Republicanism, much less constitutional conservatism, the political and constitutional philosophies that Justice Thomas has embraced his entire life and spoke about last week. His philosophies represent anything but true conservatism.

Rather, together, they constitute a bastard strand of conservatism that lingered and languished in the faculty lounges of the conservative academy from around the mid-1960s until it was summoned forth from the academy by acolytes of Clairmont McKenna College’s natural law philosopher Harry V. Jaffa to fuel Donald Trump’s rise to power in 2016.

Those acolytes included Justice Thomas and his, and my, former law clerk John Eastman.
Thus, the overarching significance of Justice Thomas’ speech last week is that it represents the intellectual political and constitutional philosophies for Donald Trump’s two presidencies and his entire MAGA movement.

It was these political and constitutional philosophies that underlaid and justified Donald Trump’s failed plan to cling to power on January 6, 2021, the architect of which was John Eastman.

The political and constitutional philosophies that Justice Thomas embraces are as certainly wrong for America, whose preeminent law is the Constitution of the United States, not the Declaration of Independence’s admittedly majestic and inspirational Preamble,” as Justice Thomas believes they are certainly right for America under that Constitution. His twin philosophies are, simply and demonstrably, wrong as a matter of historical fact, political fact, and both constitutional fact and law.

Together, they are a shockingly and reprehensibly ahistorical characterization of liberals and progressives and progressivism, as well as an ahistorical characterization of Republicans, Republicanism, and conservativism.

These philosophies are a radical understanding of American and world history over the past century and a quarter, a radical way of thinking about American political history, and a decidedly radical way of thinking about the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.


This is emphatically not what the Founders of this nation and the Framers of the Constitution of the United States contemplated, envisioned, or ever intended.


The historical flaws in Justice Thomas’ speech are many and every one of them has already been identified and authoritatively denounced by experts and scholars across the political, philosophical, and ideological spectrum.

Justice Thomas purports to trace progressivism in America back to Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, when in fact progressivism for the past century and a half is actually traceable directly back to Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Astonishingly, Thomas then blames all progressives of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – including progressives in the United States over this period – and charges them with responsibility for the profound failures of societies worldwide during those one hundred and twenty-five years, including Stalinism, Maoism, Mussolini’s fascism, Naziism, and worse.

Oblivious to the actual history, but supremely confident in his ahistorical understanding of that history, Justice Thomas intoned as if reading from the Gospel that “Progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever…. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.”

Justice Thomas’ invidious accusation that progressives in America for the past century and a half up to this very day have been pursuing the same anti-democratic and anti-constitutional regimes as Stalinism, Maoism, Mussolini’s fascism, Naziism, and the like, is frightening, risible, and reprehensible.

While it can fairly be said that Woodrow Wilson was critical of the Declaration’s Preamble, virtually no other Progressive or Democrat since Woodrow Wilson has so much as criticized the Preamble, much less rejected it. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., famously regarded the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as the “promissory notes” to which all Americans were heir and he called upon the nation to fulfill the pledges of these two Founding documents.

Jeffrey Rosen, one of the greatest constitutional scholars and historians of our times and indisputably the foremost constitutional scholar of America’s Founding, writes in his recent book The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America that Thomas Jefferson was, after all, the founder of the progressive Democratic Party and most Democrats in 19th and 20th centuries revered Jefferson.

Mr. Rosen goes on to explain that when he was President Wilson’s closest advisor, progressive Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis handed out biographies of Thomas Jefferson to Kentucky schoolchildren, quoted Jefferson in the greatest free speech opinion Brandeis ever wrote on the Supreme Court, and took his famous criticism of the “curse of bigness” from Thomas Jefferson.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, a liberal originalist, worshiped and frequently quoted Thomas Jefferson. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt built the Jefferson Memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C. and had Jefferson’s portrait permanently engraved on the obverse of the nickel and his Virginia home, Monticello, engraved on the reverse. Mr. Rosen writes that President Roosevelt died the day before Thomas Jefferson’s birthday with an undelivered speech in hand, in which he called Thomas Jefferson the prophet of the post-war order.

And of course, President William Jefferson Clinton began his inauguration with a pilgrimage to his namesake’s Monticello home in Charlottesville, Virginia, symbolically traveling from Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home to the Nation’s Capital, to be sworn in as the 42nd President of the United States.

As a matter of historical fact, every single progressive president since Theodore Roosevelt, with the arguable exception of Woodrow Wilson has unhesitatingly embraced the Declaration’s Preamble, the Declaration itself, and indeed, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.

For 250 years, it has never been the case that either of America’s two political parties has been anti-Preamble, anti-Declaration of Independence, or anti-Constitution . . . until, that is, the past 10 years, when the Republican Party led by Donald Trump has acted as if it were all three.

As a matter of historical, political, and constitutional fact, it is the 47th President and today’s Republicans and conservatives who, every day of the week, act in denial of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, all the while professing to revere these two Founding and foundational documents of the United States of America.

Categories Ethics, Extremism

If Dr. Seuss Opined About How to Fix School Funding…

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2026 //
8

Bruce D. Baker is one of the nation’s foremost experts on school finance. He is now a Professor of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami.

His blog is SchoolFinance 101. He recently mused about how Dr. Seuss would explain school finance and equality of educational opportunity.

He wrote:

Alas – I’ve found a use for OpenAI – Converting my deepest theoretical musings on school finance into Seussical prose: 

Oh, the Funds You Will Flum!
(A Zany Zoodle on Equity, Adequacy, and Opportunity Gum)

In a flibber-flap land of the Schollaroo Schools,
With Sneetchy-like districts and Yoppity rules,
There lived some young learners (some tall, some quite small),
Some had lots of Zoom-Zooks… some nothing at all.

Now the Board of Big Thinkers (in hats three feet wide)
Said, “Fairness! We’ll fix it!” and puffed up with pride.
“We’ll give EVERY school just the same little stack—
Same dollars! Same books! Same chalk in each pack!”

But the Glumguzzle Kids from the Far Fizzle Vale
Said, “That sameness you’re selling is starting to fail!
For we’ve got more needs than the Zazzberry crew—
Same stuff doesn’t make us equal to you!”

“Oh fiddle-dee-FOOF!” said a Number McNerd,
Adjusting his graphs (which were wildly absurd).
“If fairness is sameness, then sameness we’ll do!”
But the data went BLORP! and the theory fell through.

Then a Wise Whiffling Wonk (with a long curly tie)
Said, “You’re asking the wrong kind of ‘what’ and of ‘why.’
Don’t stare at the STUFF—don’t just measure the pile—
Ask what kids can do at the end of the mile!”

“Set goals!” cried the Wonk. “Let outcomes be king!
A common big target for every small thing!
If all kids must reach the same Zibble-Zoo height,
Then fund them so EACH one can climb it just right!”

“But WAIT!” cried the Snargle from Budget Bay Bog,
“You’re forgetting the Blibbers! The Froons! And the Fog!
Some start way behind on the Great Learning Track—
You can’t just say ‘equal!’ and pat your own back!”

So they huddled and muddled and scribbled in ink,
With equations that wobbled and charts that would clink.
Till they stumbled—KERSPLOOSH!—on a curious rule:
“To be truly fair, you fund not by the school…

But by NEED!” they all shouted. “Yes, NEED is the key!
More Zorks for the Borks! More help for the Wee!
Unequal inputs (now isn’t that neat?)
Are how equal outcomes can finally meet!”

Then in strutted Adequacy (round as a bun),
Saying, “I’ve got a shortcut! A quick way! A fun!
Just set a low bar—call it ‘good enough done’—
And declare every system a marvelous one!”

“For school’s not a puddle—it’s more like a race,
Or a ladder, or jungle, or zig-zaggy place!
Where where you land matters (oh yes, it is true),
For jobs and for futures and who gets what who!”

“Oh NO!” cried the Wonk, with a wobble and squeak,
“That ‘good enough’ thinking is terribly weak!
If some kids zoom high on a rocket of flair,
While others just hover… that still isn’t fair!”

“So adequacy?” asked a small nervous Nerp.
“Is it useful at all, or just policy burp?”

“Why yes!” said the Wonk. “But don’t let it shrink—
When budgets go BLINK! and revenues BLINK!
That floor must stay sturdy, not sink in the goo,
Or opportunity slips right away from your view.”

Then they built a GRAND GIZMO (with levers and springs),
That balanced these tricky, conflicting things:

One lever for NEED (pull it higher for some),
One lever for GOALS (so all kids can become),
One lever for BASES (tax gaps big and wide),
So poor little districts don’t lag far behind.

The machine whirred and clanked—CLACK-CLUNKETY-CLACK!—
Spitting fairness (at last!) from the back of the stack.

And the children? The children went ZOOMITY-ZEE!
Climbing their ladders as far as could be!
Not all in the same way, not all at the same pace,
But each with a real, fighting, fair-starting place.

So remember, dear reader (with eyebrows or none),
This tale of the Funds You Will Flum when begun:

Don’t trust simple sameness—it’s often a trick.
Don’t settle for “adequate”—that’s far too quick.
Set bold common goals, but fund smartly indeed—
And tilt all the dollars in favor of NEED.

For a system that’s fair (in this wibbly world stew)
Must be stretchy and thoughtful and slightly askew—
A bit Seussian strange, but precisely on track…

Or the whole thing goes SPLOOP!
…and we’re right back to whack.

Categories Equity, Funding, Humor

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Is Stuck in a Quagmire, Lashes out at Critics, and Praises Himself

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
5

Heather Cox Richardson sums up the quagmire in which Trump is stuck, unable to bully Iran, and, according to him, “bored” by the stalemate in negotiations. His response, as she shows, is to unleash a flurry of unhinged tweets about his grandeur, his historical significance, and his self-regard. One can only imagine the reaction of the media and the public if any other president posted similar images and words. At minimum, there would be widespread concern about his deepening megalomania.

She wrote:

As we enter the summer months, we’re hitting the ground running. There is so much news today, I’m going to have to let some of it splash over into tomorrow to do it justice. For today, Iran and its role in the president’s deteriorating mental condition are going to take center stage.

Over the weekend, there were what I’m going to have to call the usual reports of an imminent agreement between the U.S. and Iran to end hostilities, with the usual outcome.

Last week the U.S. and Iran appeared to be making headway on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to continue the ceasefire and to establish a framework for further talks about Iran’s nuclear program. But President Donald J. Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place in these negotiations.

His base demands that he look strong and accomplish what, after the initial strikes failed, he claimed to have started the war for: to make sure Iran doesn’t have the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. He also needs to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—which was open before he began the strikes—and get oil flowing again from that region of the Middle East. Prices in the U.S. are rising, and the looming threat of oil reserves running out adds even more pressure to consumer prices.

And Congress returns to work tomorrow, raising the possibility that lawmakers will pass a war powers resolution requiring Trump to withdraw American forces from the region. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent House members home a day early before the Memorial Day holiday out of concern such a measure would pass.

But Iran is in no hurry to throw Trump a lifeline. Their negotiators now maintain they have a right to control the Strait of Hormuz. They are demanding reparations for the damage inflicted in the country during the war, and they say they won’t negotiate over the nuclear program until there is a ceasefire.

But these conditions are all problematic for Trump’s negotiators. Permitting Iran to control the strait is not just about oil; it’s about the principle of freedom of the seas set out after World War II. Global trade depends on that concept. The exchange of money is also a problem for Trump. He has spent much of his political life attacking the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K., the U.S., and the European Union negotiated with Iran during the Obama administration, claiming that former president Obama “gave” Iran $1.7 billion. In fact, the JCPOA simply permitted the release of Iranian assets frozen overseas by sanctions, but much of Trump’s base believes that Obama showed weakness by buying an agreement.

And then there is the nuclear issue.

So what has tended to happen in negotiations is that the teams come up with a framework, details leak to the media, and Trump’s base hears that Trump has weakened on some of his maximalist demands. They complain, Trump then posts something false about the talks or incendiary about Iran, and the negotiations fall apart.

And the cost of the war, in both lives and treasure, and the pressure on U.S. consumers and the economy continue to mount.

Last Friday, Trump and his advisors spent two hours discussing the latest round of negotiations in the Situation Room. According to Erika Solomon and Farnaz Fassihi of the New York Times, that agreement included the release of about $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets and a postwar “investment fund” to rebuild Iran, with one diplomat telling the journalists the number on the table was $300 billion. Talks about Iran’s nuclear program would be deferred.

On Friday morning, Trump posted, once again, that the strait would be opened and that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. But then he emerged from the Situation Room without the “final determination” on the agreement he had promised. On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaie, one of the advisors to Iran’s supreme leader, posted: “As predicted, the President of the United States is betraying diplomacy for the third time.”

Over the weekend, Trump’s social media account posted repeated attacks on Democrats and on the judges who have been deciding against him in legal cases. He posted long defenses of his alterations to monuments in Washington, D.C., and AI images of capital landmarks covered in trash and graffiti juxtaposed with ones gleaming and fresh, with captions that blame Democrats for the former and praise Trump for the latter.

His posts seemed designed primarily to reassure himself. By Saturday, so many of the musical acts his team had lined up to play at his Freedom 250 “Great American State Fair” from late June through the beginning of July had bailed that Trump posted that he was “thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate “Artists,” and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!” He continued: “Two years ago, the United States was DEAD. Now we have the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. I don’t want so-called “Artists” that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy. I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN. So, by copy of this TRUTH, I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, D.C., same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited—It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

It was an odd echo of his December 19, 2020, tweet calling his base to Washington, D.C., in which he wrote: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Odder still was what followed: image after image of Trump as a great leader. There were images of Trump alongside first president George Washington, one of them showing the two presidents riding horses together in colonial garb beside a racecar with TRUMP across the hood, the White House in the background, and the Space Shuttle overhead. In an AI image, Trump is dunking a basketball over an exhausted New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat; in another image, he and Patriots football player Tom Brady stand talking, backlit, under a caption that reads “GOAT.”

There were pictures of Trump kissing the American flag; Mount Rushmore with Trump’s sculpture in line with those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln (who looks somewhat alarmed); Trump apparently as a superhero admiral with armor on his chest that bears an American eagle; Trump standing near King Charles; Trump with China’s president Xi Jinping.

A series of AI images in the style of the 1950s Dick and Jane readers show a town parade festooned with flags and patriotic bunting, little girls laughing together at an old-fashioned town fair, and little boys in a suburb playing ball. All of the images read: “AMERICA IS BACK!” And in them, all of the people are white.

He posted an image of a white family from that era standing beside a Cadillac Coupe DeVille parked on a suburban street, with the caption: “BILLIONS WERE SPENT TO CONVINCE YOU THIS IS EVIL.”

Then Trump’s account posted a series of images contrasting his vision of Biden’s America versus his own. In his images, Biden’s world was one of theft, illegal squatting, violence, and illegal immigration. The images of Trump’s “solutions” to these problems showed people imprisoned, arrested, and deported.

At 1:02 this morning, Trump posted: “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us. But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end—It always does! President DJT”

A minute later, his account posted: “Has anyone ever seen a happy Dumocrat???”

Then, later this morning, Iranian officials said they were suspending negotiations with the U.S. until Israel, which entered the war alongside the U.S., stops its strikes on Lebanon, strikes they say violate the ceasefire agreement. They warned they would close the Strait of Hormuz entirely—a few ships have been making the transit—and move against the Bab al-Mandab strait at the outlet of the Red Sea, as well. On CNBC, Trump told Eamon Javers that he doesn’t care if peace negotiations with Iran end. “I couldn’t care less,” he said. Negotiations were starting “to get very boring.”

But oil prices jumped sharply with the announcement of the suspension and the threat to the Bab al-Mandab, and at 1:43 in the afternoon, Trump posted: “Talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.” At 5:47, he posted on social media that he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and indirectly with Hezbollah, and that they both agreed to stop striking each other.

The Pentagon has been trying to control information coming out about its actions for months now, but that effort is now ramping up. This afternoon, Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has designated its press office as a classified space—a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF—and even those journalists who have not had their press badges rescinded will require an appointment to talk to the press secretary. 

—

Notes:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-obama-iran-cash/
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/29/trump-no-update-iran-deal-00943503
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/world/live-news/iran-trump-lebanon-war-news?post-id=cmpv0qep900003b6sh3u6kp9i

Click to access Fact-check-iran-deal-1.pdf

Tehran pauses peace talks with U.S. over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Iranian sources say
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/trump-iran-war-negotiations-oil-israel-interview.html
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2026/06/01/trump-i-dont-care-if-iran-talks-are-over-00944460
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/oil-prices-trump-iran-talks-collapse-rcna347869
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/06/01/pentagon-bans-journalists-press-office-designating-it-classified-space/

X:

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scottbudman/status/1604915748693909504

HamidRezaAz/status/2061439791132996026

Trump’s Truth:

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Categories Character, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Health, Trump

Hegseth Removes Black and Female Navy Officers from Promotion List

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
12

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth doesn’t like people who are not white males, straight white males to be exact. when a board of Navy admirals presented their candidates to be one-star admirals, Hegseth struck the names of four woman and two Black persons on the list. He also struck the names of four white men. When he was first appointed by Trump to his post, he began the purge of high-ranking women and Blacks. Hegseth is a bigot.

The New York Times reported:

In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.

The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.

Three of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional four are white men.

Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by five current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percent of the active-duty Navy.

Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is only supposed to pull officers from the list for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.

Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that seem to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say why Mr. Hegseth pulled the officers off the Navy one-star list. “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Mr. Parnell said. “The department will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Navy declined to comment.

Since taking office, Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of a broader campaign designed to purge the Pentagon of leaders he has disparaged as “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke.” He has consistently refused to explain why he has chosen to fire officers or pull them from promotion lists.

His scrutiny has fallen heavily on female and minority officers, who have borne the brunt of the dismissals. Nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Mr. Hegseth has fired are female or Black, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in recent Senate testimony. Women and minorities currently account for fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.

“You are hollowing out the military’s bench of experience and highest-performing senior officers, while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve,” Mr. Reed told Mr. Hegseth at another recent hearing.

Among those dismissed were Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy.

Earlier this year, Mr. Hegseth also removed four colonels — two Black men and two women — from the Army’s list of nominees for one-star general over the objections of Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll. Mr. Driscoll insisted that the officers had a long history of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong.

Officers selected for one-star rank are picked by a board of admirals or generals who review hundreds of personnel files over the course of meetings that can span two weeks. Only about 5 percent of those eligible for promotion to one-star are chosen, making it the most competitive board in the U.S. military.

The lists are then reviewed by the service secretaries and the defense secretary, who under Pentagon rules may strike names in limited circumstances, like the emergence of new information that raises questions about the officers’ qualifications for service.

Despite the rigorous and competitive selection process, Hegseth is certain that women and Blacks are chosen only to satisfy diversity goals.

Categories Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Racism

Colorado: Governor Polis Bends to Trump Pressure, Frees Tina Peters

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
2

Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.

Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.

Trump bullied Governor Jard Polis of Colorado to free Tina Peters, and Polis succumbed:

Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Injustice, International, Trump

“60 Minutes” Punches Back at Firings

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
4

Oliver Darcy posts a very informative update on news of the media world. This is an unusual one, which appeared yesterday, based upon a recording of a meeting of the staff of “60 Minutes” with its new executive producer.

“60 Minutes” is the leading news program in the nation. It’s investigative reporting is known for being fearless.

When CBS was purchased by the billionaire Ellison family, they set about making the network more Trump/friendly. Part of the deal to sell CBS was the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show by the previous owner Shari Redstone.

After ownership changed, David Ellison hired Bari Weiss, editor of a center-right blog called “The Free Press” to be editor-in-chief of news. She was a print journalist with no experience in broadcast journalism.

There was an immediate uproar at “60 Minutes,” when Weiss delayed a segment on immigration because the producer Sharyn Alfonsi did not obtain a comment from the Trump administration. Eventually, the show aired and later Alfonsi was fired, along with other correspondents and staff, including the executive producer Tanya Simon.

The veteran staff of “60 Minutes” is clearly outraged by the firings and by the choice of an executive producer selected by Weiss.

Pelley’s ‘60 Minutes’ Revolt

In a stunning confrontation, Scott Pelley accused Bari Weiss of “murdering” the newsmagazine and relentlessly grilled her newly installed executive producer, Nick Bilton, over the show’s recent firings, according to audio obtained by Status. 

On Monday morning, the staff of “60 Minutes” convened for an introductory meeting with Bari Weiss‘ handpicked new executive producer of the program, Nick Bilton. Bilton, the technology journalist who lacks both broadcast news and managerial experience, opened the meeting by reading from some prepared notes. He didn’t get far. 

Scott Pelley, the iconic “60 Minutes” correspondent and longtime CBS News journalist, interjected and started grilling Bilton about what he dubbed “Black Thursday”—referencing the day last week in which Weiss carried out mass firings, terminating Tanya Simon as executive producer, ousting Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega as correspondents, and showing the door to other senior staffers. 

In the extraordinary back and forth, an impassioned Pelley relentlessly pressed Bilton on Weiss’ intentions for the storied newsmagazine, pointed out that he has no relevant experience to helm television’s most prestigious news program, grilled Bilton on what he knew about the firings, and more. 

“Bari loves this institution,” Bilton told staffers at one point during the highly contentious meeting. “She loves ’60 Minutes.'” 

“She’s murdering ’60 Minutes,'” Pelley countered. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that.” 

This story is based on audio of the meeting obtained by Status. A CBS News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but Pelley’s stunning series of remarks left staffers on the newsmagazine wondering if he will resign. 

In the meeting, Pelley pointed out that Weiss has “no qualifications for her job” and told Bilton “you have slender qualifications for this job.” Pelley, the former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” noted that the changes Weiss has made to that program “have been catastrophic.” 

“So why should we expect any of this is going to be any better?” Pelley asked Bilton. 

Bilton tried to move the meeting along, but Pelley pressed on, challenging the new executive producer’s references in interviews to “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt’s vision for the program as he outlined his plans. 

“I have another question,” the veteran journalist said. “Did you at any point work with Don Hewitt, telling everybody about what Don Hewitt thought, and what his inspiration was? I worked for Don Hewitt from 1999 to 2004 and Lesley Stahl probably worked with him for 30 years. Just wondering how you have such deep insight?” 

Bilton replied that he was simply quoting Hewitt’s own words from past interviews and asked Pelley whether he had any other questions. Pelley said that he did. 

“I have many questions,” Pelley responded. “What was wrong with Sharyn Alfonsi?” 

As Bilton started to say he would “defer,” Pelley interrupted: “This is not the crowd to dodge.” 

Bilton insisted he was not dodging. 

“Nobody talked to you about that?” Pelley continued, pressing him on the firing. “They’re taking one of your correspondents away and nobody mentioned to you what was wrong with Sharyn?” 

Bilton acknowledged that he “had conversations with people.” 

“And what came out of those conversations?” Pelley asked. “They are private conversations?” 

Bilton reiterated that he “did not fire” Alfonsi or Vega. Pelley pointed out that Bilton had nonetheless discussed the matter with others. Charles Forelle, a top Weiss deputy and managing editor of CBS News, interjected, telling Pelley that he was being “rude.” 

“This is not actually productive,” Forelle said. “This is not an interview.” 

“It’s working for me,” Pelley replied. 

“Anybody came into our house—this is ’60 Minutes,'” Pelley added. “I guess you wandered in expecting to read a statement off?” 

Pelley then asked Bilton “what was wrong with” Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of “60 Minutes” who was fired on Thursday. 

Bilton again said that he did not fire Mihailovich. Forelle one more told Pelley that he was being “rude.” 

Pelley did not let up, however. The veteran newsman told Bilton and Forelle that the way management handled the firings was “cruel.” Forelle—yet again—responded by calling Pelley “rude.” 

“I’m not being rude,” Pelley shot back. “I have some pretty—you know what was rude? Black Thursday. That was the absolute definition of rudeness. Telling Tanya Simon she had to be out of here at five o’clock. Sending Draggan Mihailovich to HR to get fired, because nobody could look him in the eye. Not talking about Tanya’s contract. Not talking about Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract. Not talking about Cecilia Vega’s contract. Just calling them up and telling they were fired. That’s rude. This is a conversation. That is rude, and you were part of that.” 

At that point, Bilton acknowledged that there were many questions about the moves that Weiss had made last week. He said he did “not feel comfortable” answering some of them and proposed going to Weiss—who was notably absent from the meeting—so that Pelley could raise his concerns to her directly. 

“What I would like to do right now is talk about what happens next,” Bilton added. 

As Bilton tried to move the discussion on to the show’s future, another staffer pointed out that it “takes years” to develop new correspondents for the program and noted that new correspondents would require training. 

Bilton pushed back, saying “these are not going to be new correspondents that have never done this before.” The remark drew laughter, to which Bilton said, “You have no idea what my plans are, so I will present those plans to you. I will present them when the time is right.” 

Pelley, who was applauded multiple times during the meeting by other staffers present, then refocused the conversation on the firings. 

“Here’s a question: Were you aware of how Black Friday was going to play out?” he asked. “I find it odd that you would take this job knowing that you would never be welcomed here.” 

“I have no problem taking a job in a place that I am not welcome, OK? I don’t believe that will be the case,” Bilton replied. 

“I am not intimidated by—I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I have sat and talked with incredibly powerful people like you have,” Bilton continued. “None of it intimidates me, OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.” 

“Does it show good judgment to take this job under those circumstances?” Pelley asked. 

“Yes, it does,” Bilton replied, saying he would end on this note: “The reason it takes good judgment is because I care so deeply about this institution, and I want to ensure that what happened to TIME magazine and all of these other institutions does not happen here.” 

“Well, we feel protected,” Pelley replied. “That’s great. Thank you.” 

Bilton then brought the acrimonious meeting to a close, thanking the staff for “graciously being so welcoming.” 

Categories Censorship, Disruption, Ethics, Media, Trump

Pasi Sahlberg: The Making of an “Education Warrior”

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2026 //
8

This article by Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg tells the story of how he became an “education warrior.”

Pasi is one of the best-known education gurus in the world. He is an articulate advocate of a “whole child, child-centered” view of education. He believes in the power of teachers. He has stood strongly against standardized testing, incentives, punishments, and markets throughout his career.

He is one of my personal heroes.

Categories Accountability, Character, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Creativity, Curriculum, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Play, Students

Brian Brady: What Knowledge Is Worth Learning?

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2026 //
7

Brian Brady is the grandson of Marion Brady, a progressive educator who has been critical of typical school subject-based curricula for many decades. Benjamin asks questions that his grandfather Marion has asked and puts them into the context of the 21st century, where information is easily accessible but hard to put into context as “knowledge.”

Brian has done his grandfather proud, as folks used to say.

Brian Brady writes:

The crisis is no longer information. It is orientation.

My grandfather Marion Brady is 99 years old. For most of his life he has been asking a single question that feels larger now than when he first asked it:

What is worth learning?

Not what is easiest to test.

Not what breaks neatly into standards and benchmarks.

Not what helps institutions sort children into rows, percentiles, and predictions.

What is actually worth learning?

It sounds like a school question. It is not. It is a civilizational question.

If you take it seriously, it does not just expose the limits of school. It exposes the limits of the world school was built to serve.

Modern education was designed for an industrial age. Its task was not wisdom, but coordination, standardization, and legibility. It divided knowledge into subjects, time into periods, children into age groups, achievement into grades, and called that order an education.

For the world that built it, this made sense. Industrial society needed people who could move through prearranged sequences, follow instructions, tolerate fragmentation, and mistake compliance for progress. School served that machine well.

The problem is that the structure remained after its justification expired.

And still we teach as if reality itself were divided into compartments. Math at nine. History at ten. Science after lunch. Literature here. Economics there. A little civics. A little technology. Each subject kept in its lane as though the world itself respected those borders.

It does not.

Life does not arrive in subjects.

A financial crisis is not economics. It is psychology, history, incentives, propaganda, institutional failure, and fear operating at once. Illness is not biology. It is money, labor, family, bureaucracy, grief, and mortality arriving together. Loneliness is not merely a private feeling. It is architecture, technology, work, romance, status, community, and meaning breaking down in a recognizable pattern.

Reality is not modular. It is entangled.

That is part of why so many people leave school with a disappointment they cannot quite name. They did what they were told. Learned the material. Passed the tests. Moved through the sequence. Then they entered adult life and discovered that reality does not present itself as a worksheet.

It presents itself as consequence.

That is the betrayal inside modern schooling. Not that it teaches facts, but that it too often mistakes fragmentation for understanding. Students are given pieces without pattern, procedures without orientation, answers without structure. They are trained to perform knowledge before they are taught how to organize reality.

For a long time, institutions could hide this weakness by controlling access to information. That was the old bargain. Sit still. Absorb the fragments. Repeat them back. We will certify that you know something.

That bargain is collapsing.

Information is everywhere. Explanation is instant. Summary is on demand. Generation is cheap. If education is merely the transfer of information, then large parts of the inherited model are about to be exposed by machines with humiliating ease.

This does not make my grandfather’s question obsolete. It makes it unavoidable.

What is worth learning when information is cheap?

The crisis is no longer information. It is orientation.

The central problem is no longer whether a person can retrieve facts, generate prose, summarize an argument, produce an image, or assemble code. The machine can assist with all of that. The deeper problem is whether a person can judge what is worth knowing, what is worth building, what is worth preserving, what is worth resisting, and what kind of intelligence a civilization should trust itself to become.

The machine is a tool. A powerful one. A dangerous one. Not because it thinks for us in some dramatic science-fiction sense, but because it amplifies whatever confusion already exists upstream.

The machine can generate almost anything. It cannot tell us what is worth becoming.

A culture that cannot answer questions of value will use powerful tools to accelerate its own disorientation. It will confuse fluency with understanding, output with insight, scale with wisdom, optimization with purpose. It will become more capable and less clear about why any of that capability should exist.

That is why my grandfather’s question now reaches far beyond school.

What is worth learning?

A person should learn how systems behave. How incentives bend institutions. How language hides power. How metrics deform the things they claim to measure. How technology reshapes attention, memory, and desire. How emotion alters perception. How to distinguish causes from symptoms. How to think across domains, across timescales, and across consequences. How to remain inwardly free inside environments built to colonize thought.

These are not luxuries. They are survival skills.

And they are difficult to teach inside the model we inherited because they do not belong neatly to any single subject. They live between subjects, across domains, inside relationships and consequences. They require synthesis, context, pattern recognition, and judgment.

That is the real educational question now.

Not how to cram more content into the pipeline.
Not how to optimize test performance.
Not how to produce students who can generate the approved answer in the approved format.

How do we cultivate minds that can actually perceive reality?

That was always the deeper force inside my grandfather’s work.

What is worth learning?

In an age of infinite information and machine generation, it may be the most important question we have.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Real Education
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