David M. Driesen – Syracuse University

02-22-2025 ~ The president’s power grab over federal agencies is the latest example of his use of the controversial legal theory.

During his first month in office, President Donald Trump has signed a plethora of executive orders that have proclaimed a dramatic expansion of the powers of the executive branch. In his latest, issued on February 18 and entitled Ensuring Accountability for all Agencies, Trump aims to bring all independent federal regulatory agencies under the direct control of the chief executive. Unsurprisingly, the 47th president of the United States has already referred to himself as the “king” and may even envision himself as emperor, making the Napoleonic statement “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” after several judges blocked a slew of his executive actions.

David M. Driesen, university professor at Syracuse University College of Law, says that Trump’s executive order to curb the authority of independent agencies is illegal and that the president is using unitary executive theory to establish a dictatorship. In the interview that follows, Driesen addresses Trump’s recent actions as well as the debate over unitary executive theory — a legal theory which says that the U.S. president can rule over the executive branch with absolute power. In two recent cases the far right Supreme Court has signaled increasing openness to this theory, once considered a fringe interpretation of the Constitution. Legal scholars and advocates, including Driesen, are now sounding the alarm that Trump’s seizure of dictatorial executive power may succeed with the court’s approval.

Driesen is the author of many academic articles and books, including The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power.

C. J. Polychroniou: On February 15, Donald Trump proclaimed on his Truth Social network that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The post raised a lot of eyebrows, as this quote is often attributed to Napoleon, who crowned himself emperor. Trump then went on to sign an executive order that allows him to claim power over independent agencies, which would turn the presidency into an office of almost unlimited powers. Many constitutional experts say that he cannot do that — so what are the constitutional powers and limits on the U.S. presidency?

David M. Driesen: Demagogues and tyrants frequently claim that they are saving the country and denigrate the need to follow law. But the Constitution requires the president to “take care that the law be faithfully executed,” and Trump is doing the opposite, attacking law at every turn.

The order asserting control over independent agencies usurps congressional authority to structure the government under the Necessary and Proper Clause. It also asserts a power to “adjust” statutes (referred to as “obligations” of independent agencies) to fit the president’s political preferences. This amounts to usurping congressional authority to amend statutes. It also calls for defunding activities that the president does not support, thereby usurping the power of the purse. The fundamental limit on executive power is that it must be used to faithfully implement, not violate or impede, statutes and further their purposes.

Does this mean then that Trump’s executive order to curb the authority of independent agencies lacks legality?

Yes, the order is illegal. But the courts will probably not adjudicate it. Instead, it will likely play out in a number of illegal decisions by agencies, many of which the courts will likely overrule. In the first term, the Trump administration lost about 77 percent of its regulatory cases. That is a lawbreaking record. Normally, the executive branch loses only about 30 percent of these cases.

There is a debate over the unitary executive theory, which argues that the president possesses sole authority over the executive branch of government. What gave rise to the idea of a presidency with virtually unlimited powers, and what are the arguments in favor of it?

The Constitution says that the president has “executive power.” The Supreme Court infers from this statement an intention to give “all” executive power to the president and not allow anybody else to exercise any part of that power, something the court emphasized in its decision granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution. But the court, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, does admit that there are some exceptions to this reading of the Constitution, for “inferior officers” and members of multimember commissions exercising only quasi-legislative or judicial power. I would say the exceptions, including some that the court does not mention, are so striking as to undermine the rule the court has constructed. After all, the Appointments Clause authorizes Congress to deny the President any say in who becomes inferior officers by authorizing the judiciary to make those appointments. Similarly, the requirement of Senate confirmation for “Officers of the United States” and the Constitution’s only removal provision, which authorizes removal by the Senate after impeachment, show that the Constitution’s framers provided for checks and balances rather than sole presidential control over the executive branch.

Many scholars, including yourself, contend that unitary executive theory is a dangerous idea. What makes it so dangerous? How is it used? And is Trump the first president seeking to implement the unitary executive theory?

The court has inferred from the president’s power to execute law an authority to remove at least the single heads of administrative agencies without any reason at all. Arbitrary removal authority is dangerous because, as the court said in Seila Law, this power will make government officials “fear and obey” the president. That means that they will likely carry out illegal orders and can be fired for faithfully implementing law, as their oath of office demands. That paves the way for statutes a president does not like to become a dead letter and for all sorts of heinous things that the law does not authorize. And that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing.

All working democracies that I know of have independent agencies. They have found them necessary for functions where apolitical fairness is especially important. For that reason, agencies regulating the media, elections and carrying out prosecutions usually have some form of independence, whether provided by law or custom. This is true of the U.S. as well (with the Department of Justice independent by custom and the Federal Election Commission and Federal Communications Commission by law). Elected autocrats who have attacked and often destroyed democracies do away with independent agencies and purge the government of neutral civil servants in favor of loyalists. That is what Trump is doing.

Many recent presidents seem to believe in the unitary executive theory to some degree. But the presidents before Trump were not trying to establish a dictatorship and therefore limited their attacks or left alone agencies that protect democracy, regulate finance (the Securities and Exchange Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Reserve), or protect labor (the National Labor Relations Board).

Some of Trump’s more contentious actions may reach the Supreme Court. But isn’t it the case that the current Supreme Court has already embraced the unitary executive theory?

The court has indeed embraced the unitary executive theory, claiming (wrongly in my view) that original intent supports it in Seila Law and hyperbolically declaring that the president constitutes a branch of government by himself in the presidential immunity case. But an older line of cases upholds arrangements in tension with the theory, accepting the constitutionality of independent agencies in Humphrey’s Executor and the independent counsel established after Watergate in Morrison v. Olson. If the theory is carried to its logical extreme, the civil service might be unconstitutional, but the court rejected that idea long ago in Myers v. United States, the 1926 case that first suggested a unitary executive theory. So, we may find out soon whether the court will use amateur history to overturn or undermine more than 100 years of practice and precedent, thereby helping end constitutional governance in the United States. I expect that challenge to arise in cases contesting Trump’s decisions to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

Is it an exaggeration to say that the specter of dictatorship looms large in today’s United States?

It is not an exaggeration. It is a consensus view of many well-informed lawyers and law professors. Even the relatively conservative American Bar Association (ABA) has suggested that Trump has attacked the rule of law and felt obliged to issue a statement about its importance:
‘The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law. We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law.’

The world is also scared of Trump. And it’s obvious that Congress isn’t stopping him. Can the courts block his efforts to be a dictator?

Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” cutting off funding is very egregious and is producing pressures on Republicans to constrain Trump’s destruction of the government. So, Congress’s current abdication may change.

The courts could at least slow Trump down, and the lower courts will. But the Supreme Court may amend the Constitution to facilitate dictatorship by further extending the unitary executive theory.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Source: https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-executive-orders-build-toward-dictatorial-unitary-executive-power/

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a columnist for Global Policy Journal and a regular contributor to Truthout. He has published scores of books, including Marxist Perspectives on Imperialism: A Theoretical Analysis; Perspectives and Issues in International Political Economy (ed.); and Socialism: Crisis and Renewal (ed.), and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021); Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2023); and A Livable Future Is Possible: Confronting the Threats to Our Survival (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2024).

Sonali Kolhatkar

02-22-2025 ~ The National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) embodies an ethos of “solidarity, not charity,” in both fire relief and immigrant rights.

When the Eaton Fire began on January 7, 2025, in Altadena, California, it blazed through residential neighborhoods, destroying thousands of family homes. On the morning of January 8, as businesses burned on North Lake Avenue, a group of migrant workers met 2 miles to the south in neighboring Pasadena. They gathered at 6 a.m. to discuss an emergency response to the fires.

For the past 25 years, the Pasadena Community Job Center on South Lake Avenue has connected employers with skilled migrant labor, ensuring safe work environments, a living wage for workers, and quality work for customers.

Run by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the job center has also been a hub for much more: strengthening rights and protections for migrant workers, being of service to the local community, and sharing the culture, stories, and music of its members. NDLON’s work is intersectional, bringing together labor rights, fair pay, immigration, racial justice, climate resiliency, and community solidarity.

Less than two weeks before Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, migrant workers, who were poised to oppose the incoming administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, quickly pivoted to emergency fire relief. Omar Leone, NDLON’s arts director, helped organize “fire relief brigades,” to clear debris and brush from burned and smoke-damaged areas in the wake of the deadly 100 miles per hour winds.

NDLON put the call out for volunteers and workers and, over several weeks, trained members of the brigades outfitted them with protective gear and cleaning equipment, and sent them to impacted neighborhoods with trucks bearing the slogan “Solo El Pueblo, Salva Al Pueblo,” translated to “Only the People Can Save the People.” Immigrants worked alongside citizens, and workers stood shoulder to shoulder with employers. Leone, in an interview on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali, explained how the brigades consisted of “day laborers, household workers, and many community volunteers from various areas of the greater Los Angeles area.”

On the morning of January 10, as I surveyed the damage in the smoke-filled air of my North Pasadena neighborhood, I hailed such a group working on my street and requested their help to clear my backyard of debris.

The fire danger was still high, and in the horror-filled aftermath of the devastating tragedy, the fire relief brigades engaged in a simple act of solidarity that I will not soon forget. A group of well-trained young people—non-immigrants working under the leadership of immigrants—expertly cleared my backyard of dangerous debris, fallen fence panels, tree branches, and broken light bulbs, and hauled it all away in trucks.

At the same time, as it was overseeing such brigades, the Pasadena Community Job Center set up a donation hub in an empty lot next to its offices where community members dropped off food, clothing, and other necessities, and migrant workers organized to distribute them to impacted families. It became the largest hub in Pasadena during the early days after the fires. Its ethos was distinct from other donation centers, offering “solidarity, not charity”—a slogan emblazoned on the Pasadena Community Job Center’s wall.

The Pasadena Community Job Center had all the expertise necessary to mobilize skilled workers in the wake of the disaster. Leone explained how members of the fire brigades were required to sit through a day-long formal OSHA training to ensure they understood how to safely work and dispose of materials.

Pablo Alvarado, NDLON’s co-executive director, pointed out in an interview on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali that, “It’s impossible to rebuild Los Angeles without migrant labor.” He explained, “A significant segment of people who work in the construction industry are undocumented immigrants.”

Yet, at the same time as migrant workers were volunteering their time to clean up Altadena, NDLON was engaged in rigorous “Know Your Rights” workshops and trainings in Pasadena and around the country in preparation for the coming onslaught of federal immigration enforcement agents. Vulnerable workers were learning how to defend themselves from government forces while being of service to a devastated region.

“Before the fires, I was feeling really unsafe. I was having so much anxiety about what’s coming from the Trump administration, preparing for it,” said Alvarado. “There was so much stress. And when we saw people from all walks of life coming together… I just know that the world is better than what the political leaders are saying.”

The story we are told about immigrants, primarily by conservative leaders, but also increasingly liberal politicians, is antithetical to the reality. It is a false narrative that immigrants are a burden on society. In such a context NDLON’s transformative work tells the opposite story, a true narrative of immigrants being indispensable members of our communities.

Take the anecdote Alvarado related to me about a pro-Trump volunteer with NDLON’s fire relief brigades. Early on during the clean-up effort, Alvarado led a large crew of about 100 people to clean Pasadena’s Central Park of fallen trees. A young man who had helped to lift and move large tree trunks was so moved by his experience that he approached the NDLON leader and asked for a hug. “We embraced and I thanked him,” said Alvarado. “After the embrace, I looked at him and he was wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.”

To Alvarado, this was proof that “the divisions [between people] are imposed from the top-down.”

NDLON’s efforts have not only helped to demonstrate to conservative pro-Trump voters just how essential immigrant workers are to U.S. towns and cities but also solidified ties between Black and Brown communities. Altadena is a historically Black town, one where home ownership was within reach.

According to Leone, “The Pasadena [Community Job] Center has built strong relationships with the Black community, and this is something we feel very proud of.” He sees a common cause between migrant workers and Black residents, “because the Black community also faces a lot of challenges, a lot of discrimination.”

Solidarity is the antidote to division. NDLON’s work at the Pasadena Community Job Center offers a model for a path out of the Trump administration’s fascism. It is strategic, effective, and counteracts the propaganda of hate.

Most of all, NDLON’s work offers a sense of hope to those who are tempted to give up in the face of authoritarianism, hate, and climate catastrophe—in the same vein as Altadena’s residents hoping to rebuild and rise from the ashes of the Eaton Fire.

Leone, who leads NDLON’s music band, Los Jornaleros del Norte, wrote a Spanish-language song about the fires called simply “Fuego.” He explained that the song, based on testimonies of people who lost their homes, roughly translates into the following:

“This is everything I worked for my entire life, and I lost it in the blink of an eye. But I’m going to get up from this… I’m going to start from scratch. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I’ve done it in the past and I’m going to do it again.”

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Author Bio: Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

Source: Independent Media Institute

Credit Line: This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

02-20-2025 ~ Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. We must admit exactly where we are at this point in time.

Over the past few years, there has been an alarming surge of coups d’état across the world, particularly in Africa. The most common definition of a coup is an illegal attempt to seize control of the government. The seizure of power by coup leaders is often justified by pointing to poor governance and/or deteriorating security situations.

Coups are typically irregular transfers of power that occur in countries with weak democratic institutions and may be carried out by military or civilian elites. Consolidated democracies have long prided themselves of being immune to the conditions that generate coups d’etat, but the Trump phenomenon in U.S. politics seems to suggest that there are no absolutes, and that liberal democracy can be brought down.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was a coup attempt incited by outgoing president Donald Trump, and can be best described as an “attempted auto-coup.” Yet, shockingly enough, not only wasn’t Trump held accountable in the end for being criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election but was allowed to run again for the presidency in 2024. And what is even more shocking is that he prevailed in his third presidential bid by winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.

Both Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. Citizens’ support not just for a democracy-eroding leader but for one who repeatedly promised during his campaign to be a dictator, even if only for one day, is ample evidence to make the case that the end of democracy in the U.S. (or whatever is left of it as the country was never designed to be democratic) is upon us.

Indeed, an actual neo-fascist coup is now underway. Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State. Trump had promised on numerous occasions during his campaign to “demolish the deep state,” and even offered specific details for how he planned to do so. And this is exactly what is happening right now.

During his first month back in office, Trump signed a plethora of executive orders which ranged from a militarized crackdown on immigration and pardoning those who had taken part in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt to shutting down scores of federal agencies and starting mass layoffs across governments. By declaring himself above the law, Trump’s intent is to use executive power not for the purpose of dismantling the “deep state” in order to make federal government more efficient and therefore more responsive to citizen needs, but rather in order to take over government and have it run by loyalists, by people who would faithfully obey the commands of the “Great Leader.”

The aims behind this neofascist coup are threefold: Oligarchic state capture; white Christian nationalism as the hegemonic project; and the rise of a new U.S. empire.

Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.” Dismantling the government bureaucracy is seen by the aspiring dictator and the world’s richest person as an essential course of action if “powerful individuals or corporations” are to have absolute freedom in creating rules and policies that serve their own benefit, at the expense of society. Trump and Musk are both fervent believers in the “natural right” of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit.

The assault on regulations and on workers’ rights and vital workers’ institutions by the “two brothers” as prerequisites for economic prosperity forces us to go back to the 1880s when laissez-faire capitalism and social Darwinism ruled the day in order to find comparable situations. Trump has always been anti-labor, but Trump 2.0, influenced as heavily as it is by the anti-labor agenda of Project 2025, that wants to roll back all labor reforms under the Biden administration, outlaw public sector unions and indeedrewrite a hundred years of labor law, could be the most damaging administration the U.S. labor movement has ever faced. Trump’s agenda for the economy revolves around laissez-faire product market regulation and laissez-faire labor market regulations. Thus, the fact that the white working-class, which has been increasingly voting Republican instead of Democrat since 2000, helped Trump to return to power is indeed one of the most disconcerting trends in U.S. society.

Trump’s vision for America’s future is also rooted in white Christian nationalism and, as such, its realization virtually mandates anti-equality and so-called “gender ideology” attacks, along with a host of other “enlightened” undertakings such as book bans and seeking to revoke birthright citizenship. Trump’s white Christian nationalism agenda is born out of the preconceived notion that the rightful owners of this country are losing their political and cultural power. It is thus an exclusionist and nostalgic ideology which transcends social class and thus may explain why a significant segment of white working-class Americans support Trump.

Lastly, Trump envisions a new U.S. empire which includes gaining control of the Panama Canal, the purchase of Greenland, the possibility of turning Canada into the 51^st U.S. state, owning Gaza, and even extending America’s manifest destiny into the stars.The acquisition of new wealth, greater security and strategic advantage in power politics are the drivers behind this new U.S. imperialism envisioned by Donald Trump. His imposition of tariffs on imports, which is baffling to economists, is intended to force countries to play according to the rules of the free market, so it is a profound mistake to think that Trump has somehow turned his back on neoliberalism. His deadly anti-regulatory blitz combined with tax-cutting for the rich and corporations and the use of economic rules into politics should be alone sufficient enough to dispel the notion that Trump is somehow waging a war on neoliberalism simply because he is using tariffs as part of his “America First” policy.

This, of course, is not to indicate that the neoliberal world order that the United States created after the end of the Cold War is not in crisis. Economic inequalities, political fragmentation, and social discontent threaten to bring down western liberal democracies and be replaced instead by authoritarian yet staunchly pro-capitalist regimes. The contradictions of neoliberal capitalism have become so extreme that only neofascism may be able to prevent the system’s ultimate collapse. This is precisely why Trump’s billionaire top lieutenant has so enthusiastically embraced far-right parties not only in Europe but across the globe. Neofascism is also needed to defend Christian values from the “radical left” and halt the alleged threat of the Islamization of the western world.

Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed. And the only question is how to fight back before everything good and decent is lost once again in the return to fascism.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/an-actual-neofascist-coup-is-now-underway-in-the-united-states

C.J. Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change. A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky. (Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).

Saurav Sarkar -sauravsarkar.com

02-18-2025 ~ In another demonstration that the fight for LGBTQ rights in India goes far beyond marriage, a dispute in a Reliance Fresh supermarket in the posh South Kolkata neighbourhood of Jodhpur Park suddenly assumed a sinister character on 11 February. What started as an argument over a place in line became a mob assault outside the store.

Members of Sappho for Equality who were initially involved or arrived to assist were verbally, physically, and sexually assaulted. Sappho is a Kolkata-based organisation for lesbians, bisexual women, and trans men that runs a nearby cafe.

“This incident is something in our own locality – we know of this place – this was something of a shock to us”, said Shreosi, a member of the organisation who was not present during the assault but is in contact with those who were.

Neither the store’s staff nor nearby police immediately intervened during the incident, during which the Sappho members were grabbed and beaten with helmets. When the police finally did respond, they removed the Sappho members from the scene rather than stopping the mob. The Sappho members were then taken to receive medical attention, and a case was filed.

Ree, one of the five Sappho members who was assaulted, said, “The trauma that has been created, it’s a real burden. The physical pain will ease, but we don’t know how the rest of it will be relieved”.

To be queer or trans in India is a quixotic reality today. There is no doubt that progress has been made over decades – most notably with the 2018 decriminalisation of same-sex relations. It was the “fruits of labour of millions and millions of queer and trans workers,” said Shreosi.

Yet incidents like that in Jodhpur Park on Tuesday demonstrate that what she called “homonegativity and transnegativity” is still pervasive.

Moreover, it’s not just physical attacks. From birth to work to death, queer and trans people in Kolkata and elsewhere have to navigate often difficult lives. This includes the quotidian, such as going without bathroom access for a dozen hours, unemployment and low wages, or facing old age alone without the natal families that have rejected them.

And amidst those day-to-day social realities, they also sometimes have to face violent acts such as the mob attack that Sappho members faced on 11 February and in the past. “We did put our own safety at stake quite a lot of times”, said Shreosi.

She described an incident two years ago in a village in the nearby district of Howrah, where Sappho members were attempting to intervene to stop a young woman from being forced to marry.

“We were encircled by a mob… we experienced how a mob can turn violent within seconds”, she said.

The causes of this hatred of LGBTQ people intersect with other forms of oppression. “Violence is interdependent on other discourses as well”, said Shreosi, citing factors like class and ethnicity.

Srijan Bhattacharyya, the All India Joint Secretary of the Students’ Federation of India, also pointed to overlapping factors.

“The roots of this lawlessness are embedded in the socio-economic uncertainties of our people that have grown during the present dispensation”, said Bhattacharyya. “The people in power are practising majoritarianism of all forms, marginalising the already marginalised”, he said.

Still, all is not doom and gloom. “There are stories of hope as well”, insists Shreosi. “Otherwise, we couldn’t have been alive until now”, she said.

Kolkata’s – and wider India’s – queer and trans community can only fight to ensure that one day those stories will outweigh the structural and direct violence like that which transpired in Jodhpur Park on 11 February.

By Saurav Sarkar

Author Bio: This article was produced by Globetrotter. Saurav Sarkar is an associate editor at Globetrotter and a freelance movement writer and editor living in Long Island, New York. Follow them on Bluesky @sauravthewriter.bsky.social and at sauravsarkar.com.

Source: Globetrotter

Michael Ash – PERI -University of Massachusetts Amherst

02-17-2025 ~ Researchers have published data on corporate pollution and emissions since 2004. Now the data is at risk under Trump.

Since the late 1980s, just 100 companies have been responsible for 71 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst publish annual lists of the top corporate air and water polluters and top greenhouse gas emitters in the U.S. They have just released the latest data amid widespread fear that our environmental crisis will rapidly worsen in the next four years as the Trump administration rolls back regulations and stalls climate action at the federal level.

In the interview that follows, Michael Ash, professor of economics at UMass Amherst and one of the main researchers behind the PERI project tracking U.S. corporate pollution, shares the latest data identifying the biggest corporate polluters, discusses the potential impact of Donald Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” policy and offers his thoughts on how activists can push back against corporate polluters. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity.

C. J. Polychroniou: PERI has released the latest yearly editions of the Greenhouse 100 Polluters, Suppliers and Coal Indexes, and Toxic 100 Air and Water Polluters Indexes. These track the environmental performance of U.S.-based industrial activity and identify those corporations that produce the largest share of emissions as well as air and water pollution. You are one of the main PERI researchers behind this project, so which industrial corporations are the biggest polluters according to the most recent data, from 2022?

Michael Ash: In terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the top polluters are the large electrical generators, with Vistra Energy, Southern Company, Duke Energy, Berkshire Hathaway (which has a large generating portfolio) and American Electric Power topping the list. In fact, ExxonMobil is the only nonelectricity corporation in the Greenhouse Top 10. The dominance of electricity is not surprising because much energy in the U.S. is still produced by burning fossil fuels (around 60 percent in 2023 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration). The coal share of U.S. electricity has declined a lot, but natural gas has expanded.

The Toxic100.org looks at industrial toxics, corporate facilities’ release of roughly 600 highly toxic substances into the environment. Here the profile is a bit different, with large chemical, plastics and rubber, and petroleum-processors at the top of the list. Dow, ExxonMobil and Tesla (largely due to the latter’s heavy metals waste at its Sparks, Nevada, battery gigafactory) are ranked high on either or both the Toxic Air and Toxic Water lists.

A dimension we added recently is the supply of greenhouse gas precursors into the economy — basically the extraction and processing or imports of oil, coal or natural gas. At the top of the Greenhouse Suppliers list are large refiners, Marathon, ExxonMobil, Valero and Phillips 66, joined by a big coal producer, Peabody Corporation.

Do we know how emissions from top industrial polluters compare with gross emissions from entire states?

That’s a good question and I don’t have the data to draw comparisons. But we see extraordinary disproportionality in industrial pollution, an enormous share of the total pollution impacts coming from a handful of polluters at the top of the scale. This is particularly evident in the GHG domain. For the Greenhouse 100 polluters, where the top four companies alone — the electrical generators Vistra, Southern, Duke and Berkshire Hathaway — account for more than 5 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas releases from all sources. For the Greenhouse 100 suppliers, the top of the list is again enormously concentrated, with the ultimate emissions from the top 10 greenhouse gas suppliers accounting for around 40 percent of all supply.

Does the list of the biggest industrial polluters change significantly from year to year?

We archive our data and so it’s possible to track polluters over time, although we tend to highlight the current large polluters. Polluting facilities change hands frequently, like poker chips among the major players. The lists have been generally stable with the big players: the large electricity generators on the Greenhouse 100 Polluters; large oil and coal producers on the Greenhouse 100 Suppliers; and large chemicals, plastics and rubber, and petroleum on the Toxic 100.

New rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power in order to protect communities and improve public health went into effect only during the final months of Joe Biden’s presidency. First, why do you think the Biden administration waited so long to finalize new rules to clean up air pollution from power plants and, second, has there been an improvement in the performance of air and water polluters over the last few years?

The toxic risk picture has improved over the past 20 years, with especially large reductions in the first decade of the 21st century. That’s partly a function of industrial decline rather than industrial greening, and some polluting activities may have moved offshore rather than disappearing altogether.

Greenhouse gases present a gloomier picture. Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have declined, returning to roughly 1990 levels after a peak around 2005, but the decline is largely in the electrical generation sector with the conversion from coal accounting for much of the decline. Some of that conversion from coal is to renewables. However, much of the reduction represents conversion from coal to gas, which is an improvement in terms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, but remains a potent source of GHG emissions and leaves the U.S. well short of the path of emissions reductions to meet globally needed decarbonization targets.

The new fossil fuel electric power standards are a step in the right direction. They reduce both GHG and local pollutant emissions from existing (and new) coal facilities and from new gas facilities. These are welcome developments and should improve air quality and hasten the demise of coal. The new standards do not include the large fleet of existing natural gas facilities. If implemented, the new standards will substantially reduce GHG emissions from the electric power sector, reducing emissions by 2035 to roughly half of what they would be without the standards in place.

Both our Toxic 100 and Greenhouse 100 projects rely on critical right-to-know data mandated by law and federal regulation. The right to know may be in jeopardy. A couple of key Environmental Protection Agency websites for tracking toxics were offline for several days earlier in the month but they are back up now although no one knows for how long.

The Biden administration left office with what can only be considered a tremendously contradictory record on climate action. The Inflation Reduction Act charted a fundamentally different course for U.S. climate action, but the total emissions reduction falls way short of U.S.’s Paris climate commitment, which is in itself hardly adequate to tackle the climate crisis. On top of that, under Biden, oil production surged to record levels despite his campaign promise to end drilling on public lands.

Now, given that the Trump administration has promised a large-scale demolition of government regulations and even more gas and oil drilling, wouldn’t we expect to see an escalation of greenhouse gas emissions by U.S. industrial corporations in the years ahead? Can you address the objective behind Trump’s executive order “Unleashing American Energy” and the potential impacts it may have on climate and the environment? Also, what in your view are the best ways for activists to push back against big polluters, which include of course the Pentagon, as the U.S. military is one of the largest polluters in history?

It’s hard to respond to “Unleashing” because the policies are so incoherent, many are unconstitutional or subject to legal challenge, and many of the premises — for example, the notion that Biden instituted an “electric vehicle mandate” — are simply false.

It seems clear that the Trump administration will give fossil fuel companies free rein, adding to the climate crisis. The new power plant rules are a case in point. These rules, which are inadequate in my opinion, would still substantially reduce GHG emissions from the electrical energy sector (to roughly half of their otherwise expected level in 2035). Rolling those back would be a disaster.

The withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and rescinding Biden’s environmental justice commitments are among the ill-conceived and (literally) toxic policies that will damage public health and contribute to environmental and social degradation.

It will be interesting — if that’s the right word to use in a crisis — to see if there is in fact a rollback on renewables. I was driving across West Texas this summer on our family road trip, and looking out the windshield, at one moment we could see fracking rigs, oil derricks, vast arrays of windmills on top of buttes, and really large-scale (it’s Texas) solar farms. We were looking at an all-energy landscape, with abundance and profit taking precedence over climate and health. I suspect that the big renewable players will not part gently with their energy strategy, supported by market forces, technological progress and substantial subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s thin gruel to hope for entrenched capitalist interests to come to the rescue.

The U.S. government is indeed one of the larger polluters on our lists. The U.S. government is seventh among GHG polluters (much of it from federal fossil energy facilities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, but some of it from military facilities), and just outside the top 100 among toxic air polluters and a substantial source of toxic water pollution. The toxic releases are largely from U.S. military facilities.

For activists, top priorities are mobilizing to reverse the Trump administration orders and actions that are unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. Defending the right to know should be a high priority; the U.S. does a lot of regulation by right to know rather than by, say, directly prohibiting or limiting the release of toxics. Without right to know, we’re acting in the dark. There can be other sites of mobilization: State and local governments, schools (see our Air Toxics at School project) and workplaces can all become more exciting and effective sites for organizing and change.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Source: https://truthout.org/articles/data-on-corporate-pollution-and-emissions-now-threatened-under-trump/

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a columnist for Global Policy Journal and a regular contributor to Truthout. He has published scores of books, including Marxist Perspectives on Imperialism: A Theoretical Analysis; Perspectives and Issues in International Political Economy (ed.); and Socialism: Crisis and Renewal (ed.), and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021); Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2023); and A Livable Future Is Possible: Confronting the Threats to Our Survival (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2024).

02-15-2025 ~ Trump’s inclination to mix policymaking with business deals and profiteering is an ideal situation for education reformers like his nominee Penny Schwinn.

During Donald Trump’s first presidential term and the Joe Biden presidential administration, proponents of education reform declared their movement dead. Their well-funded campaign to blame teachers for low scores on standardized tests, threaten public schools with closures, and ramp up market competition from charter schools was “over” and had “died off,” reform proponents said, highlighting the “ending.”

Donald Trump’s rise in the Republican Party and his 2024 presidential win also posed challenges for education reform advocates.

As the 2024 presidential campaign raged, Axios found “public education reform missing from 2024 presidential platforms.” Prominent reform advocate Chester E. Finn Jr. lamented in the conservative education policy journal, Education Next, in 2023, “By omitting the longstanding ‘ed-reform agenda,’ the Trump team is not only departing from forty years of GOP education priorities, but also seems to not be making a play for suburban moms, independents, or Democrats, maybe not even for Republicans beyond his ‘base.’”

As Trump was about to take office in January 2025, Education Week reported that “[s]weeping education reforms is not a priority” for the incoming Trump administration.

“It’s hard to be optimistic about education reform in the wake of the [2024] election,” wrote Michael J. Petrilli, a longtime education reform advocate and president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

“Education reformers should respond to the election with some critical self-reflection,” wrote Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown, a prominent charter school advocate, who accused his fellow education reformers of being “in a professional and cultural bubble… [that runs] the risk of not truly understanding the diverse communities we serve.”

However, the negative outlook of the reform crowd changed in January 2025 with the nomination of Penny Schwinn as the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education under Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice for secretary of education.

“Schwinn’s nomination offers hope that Uncle Sam could turn his attention back toward evidence and excellence,” wrote Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Dale Chu, noting “her belief in using state assessment data to drive decisions, ensuring that progress was both measurable and targeted.”

Another Fordham executive, Robert Pondiscio, opined, “Penny Schwinn’s nomination is an opportunity to refocus on what matters: ensuring that America’s schools fulfill their twin missions of cultural transmission and competence.”

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education under former Democratic President Barack Obama and an ardent reform acolyte, praised Schwinn as “a serious person” and “smart.”

But what makes Schwinn an especially good match for the Trump administration has nothing to do with education policy. Instead, Schwinn’s hire has everything to do with what some are calling, “Trump’s ‘golden age’ of corruption and cronyism.”

Writing for the American Prospect, David Dayen warned in November 2024 that the Trump administration would entail “four years of pay-to-play deals, corporate back-scratching, and a public unprotected from scam artists.” Dayen ticked off a few industries that stand to gain under Trump’s administration, including the oil and gas industry, for-profit prison providers, and cryptocurrency exchanges.

Matt Ford wrote for the New Republic in January 2025 that throughout Trump’s chaotic reign, one constant will be his collusion with the wealthy oligarchs who helped elect him. They will use their influence over his presidency to “enrich [themselves] even further,” Ford said. “This government will be for billionaires, of billionaires, and by billionaires.”

Fears that a Trump administration will ratchet up higher levels of government corruption have been borne out, as he has fired ethics watchdogs, paused law enforcement powers, and done favors for political friends.

Trump’s mix of public policymaking with business deals and personal profiteering are ideal waters for education reformers to swim in. Reformers tend to do very well in forming networks of like-minded individuals in business, politics, and philanthropy. These groups of individuals use their financial and political connections to influence school leadership decisions, redesign school systems to function more like businesses, and ensure that private enterprises get a bigger share of the money paid by taxpayers to fund teachers and classrooms.

Much like the corruption and cronyism that characterize the Trump administration, reformers and their networks always seem to advance their personal careers and help create higher profits for private enterprises they’re connected to. And Schwinn is a card-carrying member.

‘Influence on Steroids’
One of the earliest and most influential of these education reform networks is the Broad Center, which runs a prestigious school leadership training academy funded through the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Schwinn was a member of the Broad Center’s 2014-2016 cohort.

Eli Broad, a successful businessman (now deceased) who made billions in the Los Angeles real estate market, started his foundation and training center with the mission to “advance entrepreneurship” in education. As I reported for Our Schools in 2019, Broad’s efforts to transform school management included training prospective and current school leaders to practice a more corporate style of school governance that emphasizes business methodologies rather than democratic engagement. Broad’s approach stressed outsourcing school services to private firms, confining decision-making about how education funding is spent to a tight group of inside operators, and keeping those decisions behind a managerial curtain.

Another reform network Schwinn has been part of is Chiefs for Change. Schwinn was a member of the third cohort of the group’s Future Chiefs program before she was selected to be commissioner for Tennessee in 2019.

Chiefs for Change is an offshoot of a nonprofit called Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) that was created by former Florida Governor and failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush. FEE has since undergone a name change to ExcelinEd.

Much like the Broad Center, FEE was set up to provide a nexus among reform-minded school leaders, their political allies, and private businesses looking to profit from new policies reformers wanted.

In 2013, privatization watchdog group In the Public Interest (ITPI) obtained, through public records requests, documents that showed FEE and Chiefs for Change urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would benefit private businesses, including one that Bush had made a substantial investment in. In reporting the story, Education Week quoted ITPI founder and executive director Donald Cohen, who called this backroom deal-making, “influence on steroids.”

Because these reform networks push for charter schools and other forms of school privatization, reformers frequently rub elbows with right-wing advocacy groups who also support privatization. Schwinn, for instance, is listed as a school board training speaker for the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative Beltway think tank that authored Project 2025, the policy blueprint guiding Trump’s decision-making in office.

Advancing Her Career While Undermining Public Education
Schwinn’s work history as an education official in multiple states is awash with examples of collusion among public officials, education reform nonprofits, and private corporations.

In 2018, when she served as chief deputy commissioner of academics in the Texas Education Agency, Schwinn was accused by a state audit of “offering a no-bid $4.4 million contract to SPEDx, which was hired to analyze how schools serve students with disabilities and help create a long-term special education plan for the state,” Texas Tribune reported. Schwinn’s department also “did not disclose that she had received professional development training from the person who ultimately became a subcontractor on the project.”

Texas state auditors also found that Schwinn’s department gave preferential treatment to a vendor that received a contract for creating a “more user-friendly” website for the state’s school district rating system.

Schwinn’s issues with favoritism and conflicts of interest in the procurement process followed her to her next leadership position in Tennessee, where she served as education commissioner from January 2019 until June 2023.

In 2019, Tennessee legislators voted to remove Schwinn’s voting privileges on the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission after a textbook publisher and some school district directors complained “she interfered in book selection by playing favorites,” Tennessee Lookout stated in 2021.

In 2020, Schwinn and her department again drew the scrutiny of lawmakers for her “handling of a no-bid contract with ClassWallet, hired for $1.25 million a year to manage the state’s upcoming voucher program,” Chalkbeat reported. State lawmakers also criticized Schwinn for bypassing the legislature’s contract review process and letting the contract balloon to twice its budget.

Tennessee’s voucher program, a priority for Republican Governor Bill Lee, was stymied for several years but finally passed in 2025.

In 2021, Schwinn obligated Tennessee to a multi-million-dollar deal “with a New York-based company as part of the state’s reading initiative, a move lawmakers say creates a potential conflict of interest because her husband works for the vendor,” Tennessee Lookout reported. The $8.06 million contract was with the New Teacher Project (TNTP), a company started by Michelle Rhee.

In defense of Schwinn, supporters, such as the education reform media outlet The74, have branded her a “reading champion” because of results from Tennessee’s 2023 reading tests that showed substantial gains in scores.

Under Schwinn’s leadership, the state adopted a new reading approach in 2021 that focuses on shifting to phonics-based instruction and turning the state’s third grade reading exam into a high-stakes test that would make those who flunk the test either repeat the third grade or undergo high-dosage tutoring in fourth grade. Both phonics-based instruction and high-stakes testing for third graders are policies typically promoted by education reform advocates.

But determining what exactly causes changes in test scores is difficult to pinpoint. Meanwhile, when high-stakes testing in reading put 60 percent of Tennessee third graders at risk of being left back, state education policymakers decided to tweak the criteria for holding back third graders.

Further, focusing solely on test score improvements, a favorite tactic of reformers, ignores Schwinn’s potential conflicts of interest and her long track record of advancing her career while undermining public education.

In the Thick of the Education Reform Circle
Although press outlets describe her as a “former teacher,” Schwinn’s teaching experience consists of a brief stint, from 2004-2007, with Teach for America (TFA), according to the Tennessee Star.

TFA is an alternative teacher entry program that places recruits in struggling schools after they’ve completed a mere five weeks, or perhaps less, of training. Although the program’s results are mixed, at best, TFA has been a staunch ally of reform advocates who don’t like university teacher certification programs and teachers’ unions.

However, a closer look at Schwinn’s career in the classroom, via her LinkedIn page, which has been taken down, shows she split her early years as an educator between Baltimore City Public Schools, where she served as a classroom teacher, and a “program director”—likely a teacher training position, according to a source who has observed her career closely—in the Los Angeles school system.

Since her early teaching career, Schwinn has traveled through a whirlwind of jobs and personal and professional relationships that have placed her in the thick of education reform circles.

After her work with TFA, Schwinn took a hiatus from education to serve a two-year stint in a data and information management position for McMaster Carr, a tool and hardware supplier. Then, she found her way back into education via a position at the St. Hope in Sacramento, California, where Schwinn grew up.

St. Hope began in 1989 as an after-school program founded by former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, according to the foundation’s website. But in 2003, St. Hope took on a much more ambitious agenda, including taking over a local high school, converting it to a charter school, and opening two other new charter schools.

In 2011, Johnson married Michelle Rhee, also a TFA alum. Rhee was the face of school reform as the hard-charging leader of Washington, D.C., schools from 2007–2010. In that role, she “created a system that demanded ever-higher accomplishments—higher test scores, higher graduation rates,” the Washington Post reported in 2018 after the reform policies Rhee had ushered in proved to be deeply flawed. “Philanthropic dollars poured in. President Barack Obama offered praise. And one of the most dysfunctional school systems in America became known as a model for education reform efforts nationwide,” the Post reported. But “behind-the-scenes troubles… spilled over into scandals” that included widespread cheating on standardized test results and a cover up of administrative malfeasance. (Johnson also ended up having troubles of his own.)

Also in 2011, while still with the St. Hope, Schwinn, founded and briefly led a charter school, Capitol Collegiate Academy in Sacramento, a move which no doubt further ingratiated her to school reformers.

Then in 2012, Schwinn won a “hotly contested race,” according to the Sacramento Bee, for the Sacramento County Board of Education. Schwinn was backed by “thousands of dollars in support from Parents for Great School Sacramento, a committee with ties to the California Charter Schools Association,” while her opponent had the support of the local teachers’ union.

In July 2013, Schwinn left her job with the Sacramento County Board to accept a “six-figure administrative position” as superintendent of performance management for Sacramento City Unified School District, the very administrative body, according to the Sacramento Bee, that approved the application of Collegiate Capitol Academy and oversaw its operations. To Schwinn’s credit, she resigned from the school’s staff to avoid a conflict of interest. But she continued to serve on the school’s board of directors in January 2015, according to Chalkbeat, although she no longer appears on the school’s website.

In 2014, Schwinn resigned from her job with the city school district to accept a job with the Delaware Department of Education. According to a Delaware-based blogger, months after she was hired, her husband, Paul Schwinn, was employed as the director of leadership development for the Delaware Leadership Project, funded by the Delaware DOE, the Rodel Foundation of Delaware, and the Vision Network.

The Rodel Foundation is a prominent proponent of “school choice” in the state. The Vision Network was led by Mark Murphy, a member of Chiefs for Change who served as Delaware’s secretary of education from 2012-2015, resigning after failing to enact an agenda of unpopular education reforms.

A Confluence of Investors and Influencers
In addition to her work in the education sector, Schwinn has also been an operating partner for the investment firm Vistria, which manages almost $16 billion across multiple sectors, including K-12 and early childhood education. (It is not clear whether Schwinn has stepped down from this position since her nomination.)

Vistria’s education portfolio consists primarily of companies that would benefit when colleges and universities or state and local education systems decide to outsource to the private sector education services, such as instruction, curriculum, special education, tech, health care, and library management. Although these companies may be good investments for Vistria, some of them have had troubling results.

For example, Vistria has invested in Edmentum, a company that provides online learning courses for high school students who have fallen behind in their coursework or who are at risk of not graduating, a process known as credit recovery. Research studies have found that online credit recovery programs, including those offered by Edmentum, generally lack rigor; often lead to lower college enrollments and higher enrollment in lower-quality colleges; and enable cheating by allowing students to Google questions and copy-paste answers from the internet.

Also, high school students who completed their degrees through online credit recovery do not fare as well in the labor market later in life. While they may initially have comparable earnings to those who did not participate in online credit recovery, overtime they fall behind their peers.

FullBloom, another Vistria holding that it eventually sold, is a provider of services for students with disabilities, including autism and behavioral health. FullBloom, through its subsidiary Specialized Education Services, Inc., has been a target of investigations for malpractice in Connecticut, Missouri, and Philadelphia.

Schwinn is also the chief operating officer at BHA Strategy, a political strategy firm founded by two former staff members to Tennessee Governor Lee: Blake Harris—Lee’s former chief of staff and a registered lobbyist to the Tennessee state legislature—and Laine Arnold, who was Lee’s communications director. (It is not clear whether Schwinn has stepped down from this position since her nomination.)

Harris “played a pivotal role” in passing Tennessee’s voucher program, according to the Tennessean.

BHA Strategy also brought on Brent Easley, who served as Lee’s legislative director to serve as president. Before joining the Lee administration, Easley had worked for TennesseeCAN, and its predecessor StudentsFirst TN, and with Republicans in the Tennessee State House. StudentsFirst TN is the state chapter of the national organization StudentsFirst founded by Michelle Rhee after she left her position with the Washington, D.C., public schools. TennesseeCAN was one of the groups that pressured the legislature to pass the state’s new school voucher program.

Easley was a registered lobbyist in the state for the American Federation for Children, the group started by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that advocates for vouchers.

More recently, BHA Strategy announced a partnership with BGR Group, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist with more than 200 clients, giving the Tennessee-based firm, and Schwinn, a connection to a prestigious Beltway influencer.

All of these seemingly separate developments could not be coming together at a more opportune time for Schwinn and her fellow reformers, as Trump, in his barrage of executive orders, issued a mandate directing states to spend discretionary federal funds for education on all forms of school choice, including charter schools and voucher programs.

At the same time, Republicans in Congress are pushing a bill to create a national school voucher program, which Trump appointee Linda McMahon is expected to support, should she be approved as education secretary. (A congressional hearing to approve Schwinn’s nomination has yet to be scheduled as of press time.)

By Jeff Bryant

Author Bio: This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky @jeffbinnc.

Source: Our Schools