A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.
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Friend,

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series, that serves to remind
us all of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered
during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA
movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we
fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.

This week’s Trumptastrophe brings into focus the Far Right’s ongoing
attempts to dismantle and privatize public education, and how Trump
enabled their efforts by choosing infamous public school critic, Betsy
DeVos, as his Secretary of Education:

On February 2017, Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie in the U.S. Senate
to confirm billionaire education privatization activist Betsy DeVos as
Trump’s Secretary of Education in the face of intense opposition. When
Trump nominated DeVos, People For the American Way called it “[ [link removed] ]a new
high-water mark” in the right wing’s “long war on public education.”

People For’s report noted that DeVos, who had been called “the four-star
general of the voucher movement,” promoted right-wing propaganda smearing
Democrats and public schools are hostile to people of faith. More
importantly, the report noted—and 60 Minutes later confirmed—that the
policies DeVos had pushed in her home state were simply [ [link removed] ]not working for
students as promised.

DeVos and her extraordinarily wealthy family had played a key role in
building a broad and aggressive right-wing anti-public education
infrastructure—and they have been major supporters of religious-right
political groups who had rallied around Trump. She poured money into
politics to elect legislators who backed vouchers for religious schools
and the expansion of unaccountable charter school policies that fostered
corruption and exacerbated educational inequities.

“DeVos isn’t shy about using her family’s deep pockets to buy politicians
and policies more to her liking,” said the People For report. Indeed,
DeVos was a founding board member of the James Madison Center for Free
Speech, whose mission is to eliminate all limits on money in politics.

DeVos’s used her tenure to promote the diversion of education funds to
private schools; it was also notable for [ [link removed] ]rescinding guidance documents
protecting the rights of disabled and LGBTQ students.

DeVos served in Trump’s cabinet until her resignation the day after the
Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded
to DeVos’s resignation by calling her “[ [link removed] ]the worst Secretary of Education
ever” and tweeting, “Betsy DeVos has never done her job to help America’s
students. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that she’d rather quit than do
her job to help invoke the 25th Amendment”—a mechanism that some public
officials urged Pence and cabinet members to invoke to strip Trump of his
powers as unfit to serve after inciting the insurrection.

DeVos is a good example of the Washington saying that “personnel is
policy.” And that’s very bad news when it comes to a potential second
Trump presidency:

* DeVos [ [link removed] ]told a Moms for Liberty gathering in 2022 that she believes
the Education Department should be abolished. That’s also essentially
the agenda of [ [link removed] ]Project 2025, a MAGA movement [ [link removed] ]battle plan to
“[ [link removed] ]take the reins of government” if, as if the project’s right-wing
organizers hope, Trump is elected president this year. Project 2025 is
[ [link removed] ]led by the Heritage Foundation and backed by almost 100 right-wing
religious, legal, and political groups, including think tanks founded
by former Trump officials.
* The 900-page plan calls for purging civil servants, replacing them
with pre-vetted Trump loyalists, and advancing right-wing policies
across the spectrum. “[ [link removed] ]Project 2025 Wants to End Public Education
As We Know It,” summarized Peter Greene in a Bucks County Beacon
analysis of Project 2025’s education proposals.  Indeed, the plan
explicitly embraces the vision of the late Milton Friedman, who wanted
education turned over to the free market—with states free to spend
federal education funds however they wish, with no requirement that
they be spent to support students with special needs or in low-income
districts—and no accountability for how funds are spent.
* Most of the Department would be axed, including its Office of Civil
Rights. “The federal government should confine its involvement in
education policy to that of a statistics-gathering agency that
disseminates information to the states,” according to Lindsey Burke,
head of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. Project
2025 also calls for passage of national versions of state-level bans
on teaching about LGBTQ people and “critical race theory.”

If Trump manages to win election this year, it will because of a massive
effort on his behalf by religious-right activists who want to either
dismantle public education by diverting its funds to religious schools, or
turn public schools and colleges into centers for indoctrination in MAGA
ideology with propaganda provided by the likes of [ [link removed] ]Hillsdale College
and [ [link removed] ]PragerU. Either would be disastrous for students, schools,
communities, and democracy.

These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this
fight. So, find your
favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then
make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this
election cycle.

For members who are interested in sharing the weekly Trumptastrophe
series, you can [ [link removed] ]find all previous editions on our website! This post
will be published by Thursday so you can share with your friends and
family and remind them of the importance of ensuring that Trump is
defeated again this November.

[ [link removed] ]If you’d like to opt-out of this series but still continue receiving
our other email content, you can do so here >>

Thanks for all that you do to defeat Republican extremism.

– People For the American Way

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Thanks for your support.

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