In Monopoly, the player who acquires the most valuable properties gains an advantage that compounds over time. In a shortened version of the game, the properties are dealt at the beginning, and some players simply get a better hand.

Arizona’s school districts start with a similarly uneven hand.

Wealthier communities have higher property values and, consequently, a larger local tax base. A district with a strong property-tax base has options that one with a weaker base does not. Where a student lives can help determine how much money their school district can generate.

Unlike players in Monopoly, public schools don’t get to flip the board and walk away. They have to educate every child who walks through their doors, regardless of the funding and support they receive.

The State Has Already Been Told the Board Is Broken

This isn’t a new problem.

In 1994, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in Roosevelt v. Bishop that the state’s school financing system was unconstitutional because it created substantial disparities in school facilities. The problem wasn’t simply that some communities were wealthier than others. The Court found that the state’s reliance on local property wealth was itself producing those disparities.

Three decades later (after another lawsuit), a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that Arizona’s current school facilities funding system is still unconstitutional and ordered the state to fix it. The order requires the state to address existing deficiencies, accommodate growth, maintain adequate facilities, and avoid large disparities between districts. He gave them until February 2027 to comply (including 90 days for an appeal.)

GOP Senate and House leaders appealed, and the case now sits in the appellate courts awaiting scheduling or decisions. Meanwhile, students are attending schools with aging HVAC systems, deteriorating roofs, inadequate classrooms, and facilities districts cannot reasonably afford to replace on their own.

But facilities are only one piece of the puzzle.

Prop. 123: Where Did the Money Go?

Remember Proposition 123 that was approved by Arizona voters in 2016 as part of a settlement of a school funding lawsuit?

It increased the annual distribution from the State Land Trust Permanent Fund to public K-12 schools from 2.5% to 6.9%, providing roughly $300 million a year for education.

There was a catch: Prop. 123 was temporary.

The enhanced distribution expired in 2025, and the rate reverted to 2.5%, creating roughly a $300 million annual funding gap. The Legislature has used general-fund money to temporarily backfill some of the loss, but lawmakers have not agreed on a permanent replacement, opting instead to continue to fiddle, while Rome burns.

The AEL: You Can Have the Money. You Just Can’t Spend It.

Then there’s Arizona’s Aggregate Expenditure Limit.

The AEL is a constitutional limit on how much school districts can spend from certain local revenues. The formula traces back to a 1979–80 spending baseline and is adjusted for inflation and student growth.

That creates an unusual situation: a district can have money available and still be told it cannot spend all of it.

When the AEL threatens large spending reductions, the Legislature has repeatedly stepped in with temporary overrides.

Patch. Override. Repeat.

It’s another feature of the game that would be funny if billions of dollars—and hundreds of thousands of students—weren’t involved.

The rules stay on the books. The GOP-led Legislature keeps making temporary exceptions while demanding concessions. Do they really want to solve this one?

Prop. 320: Now We’re Going to Tell You How to Spend It

Then there’s Proposition 320 which Arizona voters will consider in November.

The measure would require certain large school districts to spend at least 60% of their operational spending on “direct instructional expenses.” It applies to districts with at least 7,500 students and districts operating in Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal counties (those counties with a population of over 500,000.)

On its face, that sounds reasonable.

Arizona has a serious teacher retention and vacancy problem—almost double the national average. If more money reaches teachers and classrooms, shouldn’t that be a good thing?

Yes, but that is far from the whole story.

A school isn’t just teachers and classroom aides. It also needs nurses, counselors, speech pathologists, social workers, librarians, special education personnel, technology staff, custodians, transportation workers, administrators, and others.

A teacher cannot teach if the school cannot transport the student. A special education program cannot function without specialists. A school cannot operate without electricity, technology, payroll, maintenance, or food service.

And those functions don’t currently qualify as “direct instructional expenses.”

In FY2025, the Arizona Auditor General reported statewide classroom spending at 68%, while instructional spending accounted for 52.1% of that. Prop. 320 would establish a new 60% requirement for direct instructional expenses, potentially forcing districts to move money from other parts of their budgets to meet a number that hasn’t even been defined yet.

And there are consequences. By year four, districts could lose up to 100% of their Classroom Site Fund allocation for failing to meet the target. Those funds pay teachers, reduce class sizes, support specialists such as social workers, counselors, and therapists, and fund tutoring, teacher development, dropout prevention, and other programs.

Improving educational outcomes isn’t just about paying teachers more. It’s about providing students what they need.

The question isn’t whether teachers deserve more resources. They do.

The question is: Which resources can a district afford to give up to meet the target and which students will be hurt by the shift?

A Complicated System that Perpetuates a Lack of Accountability

This is what makes Arizona’s education funding system so difficult to understand—and so easy to manipulate politically.

There isn’t one funding system. There is a collection of systems layered on top of one another: local property wealth, state equalization, capital funding, Prop. 123, the Aggregate Expenditure Limit, Classroom Site Funds, teacher compensation, charter funding, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, federal funding, and now Prop. 320.

Each has its own rules, formulas, restrictions, and political constituency.

The result is a system where it is entirely possible to argue that more money is being spent on education while a district says it doesn’t have enough money to replace an air-conditioning system, hire a nurse, retain a teacher, or maintain an aging building.

Those statements aren’t necessarily contradictory. They’re often describing different pieces of the same funding puzzle.

That is why education funding debates so often become debates over accounting rather than outcomes.

We argue about which bucket the money is in, which formula applies, which fund can be used, which category an employee belongs to, which constitutional limit has been triggered, and which temporary override is available.

Meanwhile, our students’ and our communities’ and state’s futures are not maximized.

It All Comes Down to Who Owns the Board.

Republicans have held continuous control of both chambers of the Arizona State Legislature since 1993. Not surprisingly, that is the same year when charter schools were authorized and in 1994, the open enrollment policy in our public schools. There can be no question about “who owns the board.”

Their continual tax cuts and embrace of unaccountable vouchers are draining funding that should be going to public schools, which still serve more than one million Arizona students. Instead, those schools are forced to soldier on with inadequate resources in an increasingly hostile environment—one where privatization is promoted by lawmakers and even the Superintendent of Public Instruction, culture wars make public schools flash points, and finding quality teachers is increasingly difficult.

Arizona doesn’t need another patch to keep the game going. It needs a school finance system designed around a simple principle: students should have access to a quality public education regardless of the property wealth of the community where they live.

That will require more than moving money from one bucket to another. It will require confronting the underlying inequities in how Arizona raises, distributes, and controls education funding—and creating a system that is transparent, predictable, flexible enough to meet local needs, and equitable across districts.

It will require lawmakers to think about the next generation, not their next election.

And it will require voters to draw the line between what lawmakers they elect and what results they truly want.

The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision today dealt a serious blow to the Protect Education Act—and to the hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters who signed petitions in just 14 weeks.

Those voters were asking for something pretty straightforward: accountability.

They wanted guardrails around Arizona’s roughly $1 billion Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. They wanted basic transparency, meaningful oversight, and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. They wanted a rapidly expanding public program to meet a standard that should apply to every government program: Arizonans should be able to see how their money is being spent and hold elected officials accountable for the choices they make.

And they wanted public education dollars to prioritize public schools—the schools serving more than a million Arizona students.

Instead, because of the Court’s ruling concerning duplicate signatures, those voters will not get to decide the issue at the ballot box. After legal challenges and signature review, the initiative came up roughly 3% short of the required signatures.

That’s a bitter outcome, but it is not the end of the conversation.

Accountability Shouldn’t Be Controversial

Arizona’s ESA program has changed the way the state spends public education dollars. What began as a limited program has grown into a roughly $1 billion effort covering private-school tuition, homeschooling expenses, educational materials, and unfortunately, left a wake of fraud, waste, and abuse.

That kind of growth invariably comes with both risks and a basic responsibility: taxpayers deserve to know where the money is going and whether the program is delivering what lawmakers promised.

Accountability is not an attack on parents. It is not an attack on private schools. And it is not an argument against educational choice. It is simply a recognition that:

Public dollars - the dollars belonging to all of us — require public accountability.

At the same time, Arizona’s public schools educate over one million of the state’s students. They serve every community and every kind of student—including students with the greatest needs. If we are serious about Arizona’s future, those schools need the resources to do their job.

Arizona’s School Funding System Is Failing Students

Arizona’s Constitution makes education a fundamental responsibility of the state. Yet for years, the Legislature has failed to provide public schools with the resources necessary to meet the needs of Arizona students.

When the state does not adequately fund schools, districts turn to local bonds and overrides to make up the difference. These tools can be important, but they also expose a fundamental weakness in the system: a community’s ability to fund its schools depends in part on the wealth of the community itself.

Wealthier communities have a larger property-tax base and can raise more money locally. Lower-income communities are limited in their ability to do the same. That is not a funding system designed around children. It is a funding system designed around property wealth and it favors the wealthy at the expense of the rest.

We should not rely on local property values to determine whether students have adequate teachers, facilities, technology, extracurricular opportunities, or other essential resources.

The state has a responsibility to make sure every Arizona student has a fair shot.

That means:

• Adequate and equitable base funding for every public school.

• Less reliance on local bonds and overrides for essential needs.

• Additional support for students and communities with greater needs.

• Responsible oversight of every education dollar, including money flowing through the ESA program.

Maybe we can’t have everything, but we can ensure all our schools have enough of what they need to produce a high-quality outcome for all our students. This policy best serves our children, our families, our communities, and our state.

Follow the Money. Follow the Votes. Follow the Results.

None of this is inevitable. Not school funding. Not the state budget. Not ESA policy. Where we are today is a result of choices made by our elected officials. ELECTED officials. Yes, voters and non-voters made those choices too—choices that led directly to where we are today.

Want better? We must do better. The Arizona Legislature has been held by the GOP for 60 years. Voters have a right—and a solemn responsibility—to connect the people they elect to the results those people achieve.

If lawmakers expand a program while failing to adequately fund the public schools serving the overwhelming majority of Arizona students, remember that vote.

If they refuse to fix a funding system that forces communities to rely on bonds and overrides—and perpetuates disparities based on local wealth—remember that vote.

If they reject meaningful accountability for billions of dollars in public education spending, remember that vote.

Then, when the next election arrives, ask a very simple question: did the people I elect deliver the education system they promised?

That’s What Accountability Looks Like.

The bottom line is that if we want different results, we have to elect people who will produce them.

So this November, look beyond campaign slogans and party labels. Get informed and ask questions of candidates. How would they fund public education, how will they work for a more equitable funding system, and what will they do about ESA accountability?

And, most importantly, look at their records. Look at what they actually did when they had the power to make these decisions.

Then vote accordingly. As Lotte Scharfman, a WWII refugee from Austria and former president of the MA Legaue of Women Voters said, “Democracy is after all, not a spectator sport.”

The Arizona Supreme Court may have closed the door on the Protect Education initiative. But it did not close the door on the movement for better schools, fairer funding, and accountable government.

That door is still open and we can walk through it together. Yes, the GOP kicked the hornets’ nest. But…the earthquake is coming.

Eight years ago, before Jared Polis became governor, Colorado ranked 18th nationally. Today, it sits at the top.

In a recent Denver Post guest commentary, Polis said the ranking is especially meaningful because it evaluates “the full educational cycle,” crediting Colorado’s educators, families, and students. He also pointed to a series of policy decisions that have guided the state’s education agenda.

Whether one agrees with every policy or not, Colorado’s rise invites an obvious question: What did the state do differently?

The answer begins with early childhood education.

Colorado made universal preschool and full-day kindergarten cornerstones of its education strategy. Since implementing universal preschool, the state has climbed from 27th to third nationally in preschool enrollment, with nearly three-quarters of eligible four-year-olds participating. The philosophy is simple: invest early, and children begin school better prepared to succeed.

Arizona has chosen a different approach. The state does not offer universal preschool and generally funds only half-day kindergarten. Only about 4% of Arizona four-year-olds attend public preschool, compared with a national average of 35%.

Colorado also made a long-term commitment to public school funding.

In 2024, lawmakers fully funded public schools at the level required under the state constitution and modernized Colorado’s school finance formula for the first time in nearly three decades. The new formula directs additional resources to students living in poverty, English learners, students with disabilities, and districts facing greater challenges.

The investment has been significant. Per-pupil funding has increased by nearly $3,000 since 2019, average teacher salaries have risen more than 40%, and Colorado voters approved Healthy School Meals for All, ensuring every student has access to free breakfast and lunch.

Arizona tells a different story.

The state has not fully funded its public schools under its constitutional formula since 2008. It continues to rank near the bottom nationally in per-pupil funding, has thousands of unfilled teaching positions, and faces billions of dollars in deferred school maintenance and construction needs.

At the same time, Arizona now spends more than $1 billion annually on its Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher program while providing no comparable statewide investment in universal school meals or early childhood education.

School choice is another area where the two states are often compared.

Both embrace public school choice. Nearly 40% of Colorado students attend a public school outside their assigned neighborhood, while Arizona has offered statewide open enrollment in public and charter schools since 1994.

The major difference is private-school vouchers.

Colorado has expanded public school options while keeping charter schools within the public education system. Arizona has gone much further by creating a universal taxpayer-funded voucher program available to private school families, with annual costs now exceeding $1 billion.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings rely on measures such as preschool enrollment, student achievement, graduation rates, and college readiness. Those metrics are not perfect, but they provide a consistent way to compare states.

Although Arizona has a lower number of college educated residents and median household income than Colorado, it actually has a larger population and economy. Yet Colorado has steadily invested in early learning, public schools, teacher pay, workforce development, and evidence-based instruction. Arizona on the other hand, has prioritized expanding educational choice while continuing to underfund its public school finance system.

Politics almost certainly explains much of the difference. Democrats have controlled the Colorado Legislature for most of the past three decades. Republicans have controlled both chambers of the Arizona Legislature for more than 30 years. Those different governing philosophies have produced different education priorities—and increasingly different results.

No single ranking proves that one state’s education policies are superior to another’s. Correlation is not causation, and many factors influence educational outcomes.

But one fact is difficult to ignore.

Colorado rose from 18th to first nationally while consistently investing in early childhood education, public schools, and student supports. Arizona, despite becoming a national leader in charter schools and private-school choice, ranks 43rd overall.

Education policy does not happen by accident. Legislatures decide where to invest public dollars. Governors decide which bills become law. Voters decide who makes those choices.

If Colorado’s rise and Arizona’s struggles demonstrate anything, it is that elections shape education policy—and education policy shapes results. Until voters draw the nexus between who they elect and what results they get, nothing will change for the better.

The case in question involved two Mormon bishops who will now not have to stand trial for failing to tell authorities that a Bisbee man was sexually abusing his daughters. It also however, creates a new binding precedent for all future cases in which religious institutions and other religious groups may claim immunity based on what their faith requires and not what a jury decides.

Lynn Cadigan, the Tucson attorney representing the victims of the unreported sexual abuse, said the “This gives all religions absolute immunity to keep child abuse secret, and makes Arizona a very dangerous state for children.”

In a written statement, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spokesman said, “Today’s decision affirms that these religious protections are to be respected alongside society’s shared commitment to protect the vulnerable.”

Unfortunately, no one protected the young victims in this case. In 2011, Paul Adams confessed to his bishop, John Herod that he had sexually abused one of his daughters. The bishop asked Adam’s wife Liezza to join them in a discussion and Adams repeated his confession. Herrod advised Adams to turn himself in or his wife to report him, but neither took any action. The church ultimately excommunicated the Adams’ two years later without any reporting of the abuse to authorities.

Adams continue to rape that daughter for a seven more years and began abusing an infant sister, recording the abuse and posting it online. He was arrested in 2017 in New Zealand when officials found a video online and ultimately killed himself in jail. Liezza was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison after admitting she didn’t report the abuse.

Arizona law requires anyone who reasonably believes a minor has been the victim of abuse to “immediately report or cause reports to be made.” It also though, allows clergy receiving “a confession or confidential communication” to not report if they “determine it is reasonable and necessary within the concepts” of the religion.

In explaining their decision, Justice John Lopez referred to the First Amendment which he said gives religious institutions “and independence from secular control or manipulation.” He went on to write that “Put simply, the Religion Clauses give religious institutions the power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.”

Cadigan argued that the “confession” between Adams and Herrod was not “confidential” as Adams’ wife was involved and lay members of the church were told of the abuse during the excommunication hearing. Also, Adams made it public himself when he posted his videos online and that more than 300 other people were charged with crimes for watching those videos.

In the end, the Lopez said on behalf of the Court, “We must defer to the church’s doctrine concerning confidential communications.”

Cadigan has said she will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is of course, no guarantee of a different decision with this current SCOTUS. But, back in 1879 in Reynolds v. United States, SCOTUS drew a sharp distinction between religious beliefs and religious actions. Beliefs, they said, are protected—government cannot interfere with what a person believes or thinks. Actions however, that violate social duties or disrupt the public order, can be regulated.

SCOTUS also argued that allowing citizens to break laws based on religious beliefs would make religious doctrines superior to federal law. Reynolds v United States, was a landmark case resulting in the outlawing of polygamy in the United States. It had been brought by George Reynolds, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who volunteered to be prosecuted in a “test case” brought by church leadership to challenge the constitutionality of anti-polygamy laws.

One must wonder, how polygamy is a bridge too far for religious freedom, but child abuse is not. And, don’t forget that in Arizona, parochial and other religious private schools are fully eligible to receive taxpayer funded universal school vouchers. Anyone else have a problem understanding why it is okay for the schools to take our collective money, but not follow our collective laws?

Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in his reputation as a champion of the military.

During his first term, Trump repeatedly generated controversy over comments about military service and sacrifice. He reportedly referred to Americans who died in war as “suckers” and “losers,” publicly criticized decorated veterans and prisoners of war, and frequently used the military as a backdrop for partisan political messaging. Any one of those incidents might have seriously damaged previous presidents or presidential candidates. Somehow, Trump emerged politically unscathed.

Today, that image is colliding with the consequences of his administration’s national security decisions. Primarily, I would argue, because these decisions are not based upon what is good for our national security. Rather, they are designed to divert public attention from other politically damaging issues, including questions surrounding the Epstein files, allegations of self-enrichment, attacks on democratic institutions, and the administration’s failure to deliver on promises to reduce consumer prices.

Rather than keeping America out of another prolonged conflict, the administration has drawn the country into a war of choice while offering little clarity about its strategic objectives or exit strategy.

Junior military officers are taught early a sacrosanct principle: before committing troops to combat, political leaders should understand exactly what they are trying to accomplish, what success looks like, and how the conflict will end. Why? Because are history has repeatedly demonstrated the costs of entering wars without clearly defined objectives.

Many observers argue that this administration has failed that test.

The result is growing concern not only about battlefield risks but also about the long-term health of America’s armed forces. Our munitions stockpile is being depleted, maintenance for our aircraft, ships and land vehicles is persistently overlooked and underfunded, and the OPSTEMPO (operations tempo) for our personnel is affecting readiness. Even the world’s strongest military cannot continuously expend resources without affecting preparedness for future contingencies.

The strain is not limited to operations overseas. The Department of Defense’s overseas deployment-to-dwell time remains at the 1:3 goal (one month deployed for every three months at home.) The massive increase of domestic missions on U.S. soil however, have resulted in troops spending substantially less uninterrupted time at home with their families.

Trump though, either doesn’t get it, or doesn’t care. Following the deaths of American service members in Jordan, he told reporters during (what was supposed to be a “dignified”) transfer ceremony that the fallen troops “all said very strongly, ‘We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’” Gold Star family members publicly criticized those remarks, arguing that the president was using their loved ones to justify his administration’s policy. Those Gold Star families, and other military-connected families know that Trump has no idea what their deceased loved ones thought about the war. And, they—along with the rest of us—know that the shifting numbers on dead and injured in this current war, are not being accurately reported.

Meanwhile, other personnel decisions have generated their own controversy and contribute to the chipping away of our military might.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has overseen the removal of numerous senior military leaders, arguing that the armed forces require new leadership and a renewed focus on combat effectiveness. Supporters view these changes as necessary reforms. Critics see something different: the loss of decades of operational experience, disruption of the military’s traditional apolitical culture, and the perception that loyalty to political leadership is becoming more important than professional military judgment.

That perception matters.

Combat effectiveness depends on far more than weapons and technology. More than anything, rests on trust—trust that promotions are earned through merit, that commanders are selected because they are the most qualified, and that military institutions remain insulated from partisan politics. Trust that commanders will care for their troops and that troops will care for each other. Once service members begin questioning whether those principles still apply, esprit de corps inevitably suffers.

Additional personnel policies have further fueled discontent and distrust. Trumps executive order directing transgender service members from serving has resulted in an estimated 4,000 being place on administrative leave (with pay) while the courts work through the lawsuits that have been filed. Now, Secretary Hegseth has mandated medical screening for testosterone without any valid scientific or medical rationale. These and other personnel directives have consumed time and attention that many military leaders argue would be better spent on readiness, training, and modernization. Even supporters of these policies must acknowledge that implementing them has required significant administrative effort while affecting thousands of service members and their families.

The administration’s broader domestic policies have also had unintended consequences for the military community.

Veterans have historically relied heavily on federal employment after leaving active duty. Large reductions in the federal workforce therefore fall disproportionately on veterans, many of whom receive hiring preference because of their military service. At the same time, changes affecting military family benefits, health care policies, and immigration enforcement involving military households have generated uncertainty among service members already coping with frequent deployments and the stresses of military life.

Recognizing growing dissatisfaction within parts of the military community, the administration has promoted new initiatives such as the Freedom Haulers to fast track veterans into the commercial trucking industry. These programs though, are tiny bandaids that don’t make up for the damage being done.

What is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss, is the cumulative effect of the administrations bad decisions around military readiness. A military’s strength is measured not only by its ships, aircraft, and missiles but also by the confidence of the men and women who serve. Strategic ambiguity, political polarization, controversial personnel decisions, leadership turnover, and repeated cultural battles all impose costs that cannot be measured on a balance sheet.

History shows that great militaries are weakened gradually before they are weakened suddenly. The erosion begins with depleted readiness, declining trust in leadership, and the belief among service members that political considerations have begun to eclipse professional military judgment. In other words, decisions made for the wrong reasons. Reasons having nothing to do with honoring the sacrifice of those doing the fighting.

Just like everything else this president has touched, the military is another institution that has been degraded and devalued. Don’t believe his propaganda. He is not a friend of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. He knows he is not worthy of them and he despises them for it.

MUCH has happened in Arizona’s public education arena since my last post in March of this year. On July 2nd, the Protect Education Committee turned in 421,451 signatures to get the Protect Education Act—now Proposition 212 on the ballot in November. This was way more than the almost 256K necessary. But, the Committee knew that pro-privatization crowd would fight tooth and nail to prevent any accountability in the ESA Voucher program, so they collected plenty of additional signatures to withstand any legal challenges.

Of course, lawsuits challenging the signatures were just part of the battle that would ensue. The GOP-led Legislature also introduced numerous referrals to the ballot in retaliation for the Democrats rejecting a backroom deal designed to prevent any meaningful reform. The referrals included SCR 1032, a requirement for 60 percent of school district operating budgets to be spent on direct classroom instruction, HCR 2040, an anti-union bill focused on teachers but affecting others, and HCR 2048 a poison pill measure designed to kill any attempt to introduce more accountability and transparency into the ESA voucher program.

Recently, Arizona Superior Court Judge Greg Como ruled the anti-union measure unconstitutional. Then yesterday, Judge Joseph Kreamer of the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled the attempt to kill Proposition 212 under the guise of protecting vouchers for military families (HCR 2048), unconstitutional.

The case against HCR 2048 was brought by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest on behalf of the Arizona Education Association (AEA), Save Our Schools Arizona Network (SOSAZN), and Linda May Lyon. The plaintiffs argued that HCR 2048 violated two constitutional rules that apply to ballot referrals: the Separate Amendment Rule, which limits how many distinct constitutional changes can be combined into a single measure, and the Title Requirement, which requires that a measure’s title accurately describe its contents.

Judge Kreamer agreed with the plaintiffs on one issue but not the other. He ruled that HCR 2048 violates the Separate Amendment Rule and ordered that it not appear on the November 2026 ballot. However, he found that the measure’s title satisfies the constitutional Title Requirement.

HCR 2048 was referred to the November ballot by the President of the Arizona Senate and the Speaker of the Arizona House (who intervened in the case on behalf of the GOP-led Legislature.) In fact, Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh admitted the referral was in retaliation for Democrats rejecting the backroom deal designed to prevent any meaningful reform and negate the will of the voters who signed the Protect Education petitions.

The measure would amend Article XI of the Arizona Constitution by adding a new Section 12. Specifically, it would

• Prohibit the state from confiscating money in scholarship accounts belonging to eligible children of military families.

• Provide that if any law or voter-approved measure enacted on or after November 1, 2026, violates that protection, the entire law or measure would be invalid. Courts would also be prohibited from preserving any otherwise valid portions of the law.

The court agreed with the Legislative leaders that Subsections A and B address the same general topic because both involve protecting scholarship accounts for military families. This part of the ruling was not unexpected, since the first part of the Separate Amendment Rule requires only that the provisions of a proposed amendment share the same general subject—a relatively easy standard to meet.

The real dispute involved the second step of the analysis, which asks whether the different parts of a proposed amendment are closely connected enough to be considered a single constitutional change.

Although HCR 2048 would technically amend only Article XI, the court concluded that its no-severance provision would have effects far beyond education policy. Unlike existing severability rules in Arizona, which apply only to specific constitutional provisions, HCR 2048’s language would govern future legislation and ballot measures generally. If a future law violated the scholarship-account protection in any respect, courts would be required to strike down the entire law rather than preserve any valid portions.

Judge Kreamer concluded that this provision reaches well beyond protecting military family scholarship accounts. In his view, it would reshape how courts review legislation by limiting judicial authority to sever unconstitutional provisions and by affecting the balance of power between the judiciary and the Legislature. Those broader constitutional consequences, he found, are not sufficiently connected to the scholarship-account protections in Subsection A.

For that reason, the court held that HCR 2048 combines multiple constitutional changes into a single ballot measure in violation of Arizona’s Separate Amendment Rule.

The court granted the plaintiffs’ request for declaratory relief on the Separate Amendment Rule claim and granted their request for an injunction, ordering the State of Arizona not to place HCR 2048 on the November 2026 general election ballot. The court also directed the plaintiffs to file any request for attorneys’ fees by August 25, 2026.

The legislative leaders who defended the measure are expected to appeal directly to the Arizona Supreme Court. Because Arizona courts generally resolve pre-election ballot challenges before ballots are printed, the appeal is likely to move on an expedited schedule.

Meanwhile, Save Our Schools Arizona is leading the effort to fight back against lawsuits filed to challenge the petition signatures collected. You can help preserve Arizonans’ right to have their voices heard by donating to the legal defense fund at https://www.sosaznetwork.org/donate/.

A recently launched PAC, Fortify AZ—backed by Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children (AFC)—has now filed an alternative initiative, the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act. This proposal includes much of the same language—such as expenditure restrictions and background checks for tutors—but omits key elements like eligibility limits and testing requirements for voucher students in private schools.

AFC CEO Tommy Schultz argues that “the teachers union initiative would gut school choice in Arizona” calling Fortify AZ’s version a “pro-choice school initiative” designed to last “for generations.” In contrast, Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association (AEA), criticized the program saying “It is clear nationally, we are an embarrassment that a billion dollars is being spent on things that do not educate our communities.” She therefore welcomed broader participation in addressing “the waste, fraud and abuse of this program.”

The Protect Education Accountability Now committee however, argues the AFC-backed initiative lacks “key reforms” needed to curb unchecked spending and questions whether it represents a genuine effort at voucher reform, given its backing by a well-funded national pro-voucher group.

The ESA program was initially designed for students with disabilities, then gradually expanded to include those in underperforming schools, foster care, military families, and Native American communities. Before universal expansion, about 12,000 students participated. After the GOP-led Legislature universally expanded the program in 2022 however, 75% of ESA recipients were already enrolled in private schools. Rather than expanding access for low-income families, the policy largely subsidized private education for wealthier households. While participation has broadened somewhat, most recipients still come from higher-income areas and there is almost no accountability in the program.

Today, the program costs the state over $1 billion annually and is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) director Beth Lewis said lawmakers have failed to add safeguards: “The legislature hasn’t done anything to add guardrails for three entire years, they’re clearly not going to do anything about this, so we the people need to.” She emphasized returning control to voters to ensure accountability and academic quality.

The Protect Education Accountability Now Act is designed to do just that. It would preserve eligibility for students who qualified before universal expansion, while adding a $150,000 household income cap—about double Arizona’s median household income—to prevent public funds from subsidizing private education for the wealthy.

Unlike the AFC-backed proposal, the Protect Education Accountability Now Act was developed with input from a broad coalition, including ESA families. It limits requirements for accreditation or assessments to private schools (exempting students with disabilities and homeschoolers). The pro-voucher ESA Reform and Accountability Act however, imposes stricter requirements on homeschool and alternative education students, including mandatory “approved examinations.”

The AFC-backed proposal also fails to return unused ESA funds—over $400 million—to public schools and introduces additional provisions affecting curriculum and program administration.

Currently, the Protect Education Accountability Now Act has cleared legislative review and is full-steam ahead on gathering signatures, while the ESA Reform and Accountability Act did not seek legislative review and is also on the street. Some think the failure to ensure they “get it right” is an indication that the pro-privatization crowd pushing the ESA Reform initiative is not serious about getting it on the ballot. Rather, they are just hoping to disrupt and sow confusion. It is important to note though, that if either bill gets on the ballot and passes, it will be voter-protected and therefore would require another ballot measure to be changed or overturned.

This battle is really important. Our public schools are the cornerstone of democracy and the one million students attending Arizona’s public schools deserve our commitment to providing the resources and opportunity they need and deserve. If you live in Arizona you can help get petition signatures and if you vote here, please vote for the Protect Education Act in November.

Whether you live here or not, you can still help by going to sosarizona.org to learn more or donate to fund the on-the-ground effort to get this initiative on the ballot.

Arizona has been the leader in school choice from the beginning and was the first to pass universal vouchers. Make no mistake, we are in a real fight to save our public schools and what happens here, will reverberate across the nation. School vouchers have never survived the ballot box—the voters don’t want them. Lawmakers in some 20 states though, have managed to pass them anyway. It is way past time to send a clear message that if lawmakers won’t prioritize our public schools and require accountability and transparency in voucher programs, “we the people”, will!

I’m not buying it.

Knowing a child is not the same thing as knowing how best to educate them. Nor does it make someone an expert on what a democratic society needs its future citizens to understand. Education is both a private concern and a public responsibility—and pretending otherwise ignores centuries of hard-earned lessons.

That doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t have a say. They absolutely should. In fact, they already do. That’s why our district (community) public schools are governed by locally elected school boards, and why school board meetings are open to the public. It’s also why public schools are the most transparent and accountable form of K–12 education in the country. Parents don’t just have a voice; they have a vote. But, they don’t have the only vote—because that’s not how a democracy works.

This shared, public approach to education is not an accident. From the very beginning (starting with the first taxpayer funded public school in Boston in 1635) America relied on public schools to educate the vast majority of its people. The idea of free education open to everyone was radical at the time, and it helped transform the United States into an engine of opportunity and economic growth. By 1900, nearly 90% of American children attended primary school. Europe wouldn’t reach that level until 1930, and the world as a whole not until 2000.

That investment paid off in ways that went far beyond literacy and numeracy.

In October 2025, Lukas Althoff, a faculty fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and assistant professor of economics at Stanford University, published a report titled America’s Got Talent: The Case for Investing in Public Education. His conclusion was blunt and powerful:

Public schooling broke the link between parental levels of educational achievement and income and their children’s futures, unleashing talent that would otherwise have gone untapped.

In the mid-1800s, a child’s prospects were tightly bound to their family’s income and educational background—especially their mother’s, since mothers were primarily responsible for teaching children at home. By the early 1900s, public schools had fundamentally altered that reality. As Althoff explains, they “democratized opportunity” by replacing maternal homeschooling with universal access to education.

That miracle, however, did not go unchallenged.

Beginning in the 1950s, after Brown v. Board of Education, public education became a political battleground. “Freedom of Choice” plans were introduced in the South to allow white families to avoid integrated public schools. Those efforts later merged with economist Milton Friedman’s free-market theories, eventually giving rise to the modern voucher movement and the first private school vouchers in 1990. What was framed as empowerment was, in practice, a retreat from the very system that had expanded opportunity for generations.

And despite decades of claims to the contrary, the promised benefits of privatization remain unproven. In fact, the evidence increasingly suggests the opposite. As Althoff notes, while intergenerational mobility rose steadily from 1860 to 1950, the American Dream has been fading in recent decades:

Only 50 percent of children born in 1980 earn more than their parents, compared with 90 percent of those born in 1940.

Today, a child born into the bottom income quintile in the U.S. has a lower chance of reaching the top than children in many peer nations—including France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Sweden.

At the same time, the United States is no longer a global leader in education investment. Countries like the Netherlands, Korea, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden now outspend us. That failure to invest isn’t just shortsighted—it’s costly.

Recent examining of the full range of government programs finds that "direct investments in low-income children's health and education have historically seen benefits from such programs that are five times higher than the net cost to the government” as compared to other programs such as job training, housing vouchers or unemployment insurance which tend to have less than a 1:1 payback. Educational investments, meanwhile, fuel economic growth, increase tax revenue, and reduce long-term social costs.

Why? Because district public schools do far more than deliver academic content.

They teach essential literacy and critical thinking skills. They help students learn how to navigate an increasingly complex and diverse society. They provide extracurricular opportunities that build confidence, leadership, teamwork, and a sense of belonging. They prepare young people for civic participation in a democratic society. And for many students, public schools are a lifeline—offering counseling, health services, and nutrition programs that remove barriers to learning.

Can some homeschool parents provide all of this? Maybe. Do some private schools? Maybe. The truth is though, that we don’t know, because they aren’t required to tell us. When education is privately funded, that lack of transparency is a private matter. When it’s funded with tax dollars, it becomes a public one.

So if the claim is that parents know best, let’s put it to the test. Require full transparency and accountability for voucher-funded education. Measure outcomes. Compare apples to apples.

Otherwise, we’ll continue watching our communities—and our country—erode, while those who engineered and participated in the dismantling of our once-mighty public education system walk away richer, insisting all the while that they were acting in children’s best interests.

Amanda Gorman, our nation’s first-ever youth poet laureate, released a poem yesterday for Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother murdered by an I.C.E agent on January 7, 2026. It is not merely an elegy, but a summons.

She writes:

They say she is no more, 
That there her absence roars, 
Blood-blown like a rose.
Iced wheels flinched & froze.
Now, bare riot of candles, 
Dark fury of flowers, 
Pure howling of hymns.

If for us she arose,
Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, 
Crouches our power,
The howl where we begin,
Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater 
Of the worst of what we’ve been.

Change is only possible, 
& all the greater, 
When the labour
& bitter anger of our neighbors
Is moved by the love 
& better angels of our nature.

I read it again and again, letting it fold into my consciousness and sink into my heart. And what it says to me is this: if we want to honor Nicole Good, we must lift what she carried. We must take up her spear of peaceful protest and walk forward together to save each other and our democracy.

Good was stepping in for those whose voices are ignored, drowned out, or deliberately silenced. She understood the assignment. She understood the insulation her white middle-class status afforded her—and refused to play it safe until all safety was stripped away. She knew what history keeps teaching us: evil, left unchallenged, comes for each of us, and eventually, for all of us.

Gorman sees clearly what stands before us now. She names the precipice. She recognizes the abyss. As she did in her 2021 inaugural poem, she reminds us that appearances deceive—that quiet is not peace, that what is called “just” is not always justice. She called us then to build a democracy worthy of those who will inherit it.

She also declared that,

We’ve braved the belly of the beast.

Little did she, or any of us at that time, realize that the beast had yet to fully reveal itself.

Even as its teeth began to show, we failed to heed Maya Angelou’s warning:

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

If only.

Yet Gorman did not leave us without a compass. The final lines of that inaugural poem still burn with instruction:

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.

We can no longer pretend we don’t know who and what the beast is. And we cannot refuse to see the light, or be brave enough to carry it. Nicole Good understood so clearly—that democracy is not self-sustaining, that justice does not defend itself, that silence is never neutral. To honor her, me must not just grieve, but move. We must link arms across fear and difference. We must refuse the lie that our voices do not matter. We must not allow ourselves to become ungovernable by cruelty and unmoved by intimidation.

If the howl is where we begin, then let this be where we continue—walking forward together, eyes open, hearts fierce, determined to be the light we have been waiting for.

Greg is an expert in education; I am not. While I attended public schools growing up and served on a school board for 12 years, Greg has spent four decades as a professional educator—serving as a teacher, principal, associate superintendent and superintendent. He retires this year as a Superintendent for a district that serves 3,600 students across 10 schools, and he has already been appointed the Executive Director of the Arizona Rural Schools Association. Along the way, he’s served as the President of the Arizona School Administrators Association and Vice President of the Education for the Arizona Business Education Coalition. He was named the Arizona Mid-Size School District Superintendent of the Year in December 2022 and received national recognition from AASA in technology leadership. In short, Greg unquestionably qualifies as an expert in K–12 education.

When Greg uses the word traditional—both in his post and in the title of his Substack, Celebrating Traditional K–12 Public Education—I assume he is simply distinguishing district public schools from charter schools and the myriad of private options now available. In that sense, the word makes practical sense.

But traditional is a slippery word. Its meaning and emotional weight vary widely depending on context, and for many people it carries baggage. It can suggest something outdated or resistant to change. It can evoke long-standing customs that feel comforting to some but exclusionary or threatening to others. And in the context of public education, it often conjures images of bureaucracy, inefficiency, and inequity.

Even dictionary definitions raise concerns. Dictionary.com defines traditional as “existing in or as part of a tradition; long-established.” Merriam-Webster describes it as “adhering to past practices or established conventions.” But the definition that troubles me most comes from Britannica: “based on old-fashioned ideas; not new, different, or modern.”

Education historian and blogger Larry Cuban has written about his discomfort when a student once described his seminar as “traditional.” The student wasn’t being critical—she was simply distinguishing his more conventional course from a “flipped” classroom model. Still, the label bothered him. To Cuban, traditional implied boring classes, teachers as the sole authority, and students as passive listeners rather than active participants. For him, the word stood in opposition to constructivist learning, collaboration, and dynamic exchange. In short, it carried a negative connotation.

I recognize, as Cuban eventually concluded, that I too may be “caught up in reform rhetoric that has dirtied the word traditional.” But the more important question is whether the word is helpful to the future of our public schools. I don’t think it is. While it may offer comfort to some, it is weighed down by too many negative associations to serve us well.

I realize, as Cuban eventually concluded, that I might just be “caught up in reform rhetoric that has dirtied the word “traditional.” The real question is, is the word helpful to the future of our public schools. I think not. Although the word gives comfort to some, I think it is too encumbered with bad connotations.

To me, far more meaningful descriptors are district, community and locally governed. I personally like community, because our district public schools are the bedrock of our communities. They are the glue that binds us together—the bowl into which the American experience gets mixed—and one of the most basic expressions of participatory governance. No other form of K–12 education does as much to prepare children to be productive, engaged members of society as our community public schools. They are, and have always been since our founding, a cornerstone of our democracy.

My intention is not to distract from Greg’s wonderful message. I too believe the time has come to fight for our community public schools like never before. I too believe that we need to “reclaim the narrative” around them because the truth is that these schools are innovative, creative, and delivering results that far exceed the investments made in them.

Across the country, high schools are enabling students to earn up to two years of college credit before graduation. Career and technical education programs are preparing students for certified jobs immediately after high school. Schools are offering cutting-edge STEM and STEAM programs, strong athletics, and diverse extracurricular opportunities. Our community schools are constantly evolving to meet students’ academic needs while also preparing them for a more complex and diverse world—and they do so while remaining deeply responsive to their local communities.

Yes, our community public schools preserve traditions—Friday night football included—but they are far from just traditional. I hope Americans recognize, before it is too late, all that would be lost if these traditional schools were to disappear. It wouldn’t just be schools that vanish, but the communities they anchor—and ultimately, the country they help sustain.

Is it my imagination, or it is getting harder to find fresh produce at the grocery store? First it was spinach. Then lettuce. Now cherry tomatoes.

As with so many things going sideways these days, the trail leads back to him. You know who without me even writing his name. His aggressive crackdowns have sharply worsened labor shortages across the food supply chain, especially in agriculture, where timing is everything. Crops don’t wait for politics and the consequences are all around us.

Farmers are leaving crops to rot because there aren’t enough workers to harvest them. Ian Chandler, an Oregon cherry grower, lost 30 acres of fruit after ICE raids caused roughly half his seasonal workforce to stay home rather than travel from California. He estimates the loss at nearly $300,000.

Labor shortages don’t stop at the field. Processing plants, packing facilities, and distribution hubs are also understaffed, creating bottlenecks that slow delivery and reduce freshness by the time produce reaches store shelves.

In anticipation of these problems, some farmers choose to cut back on planting labor-intensive crops altogether. That translates into less variety and reduced availability of domestically grown produce, forcing retailers to increase reliance on imports which travel longer distances and often arrive at higher cost and lower quality.

We’ve all felt it: a pound of hamburger costing more than the federal minimum wage and egg prices jumping as much as 50% earlier this year. And, the USDA expects prices to keep climbing into 2026, albeit more slowly. Of course, I’m not sure how much we can rely on government statistics these days.

Trump’s response has been to dismiss affordability as a “Democratic scam.” Meanwhile, farmers are squeezed by higher costs, tariffs, and canceled USDA programs. After backlash from farmers, most of which have traditionally supported him, Trump promised them a $12 billion bailout this past fall—payments that now won’t begin until at least late February.

Of course, climate change and water insecurity are threats to our future food supply. But a lack of labor is an immediate risk. One Labor Department–cited study found that a 10% decline in the agricultural workforce can reduce fruit and vegetable production by up to 4.2%. With an estimated 42% of U.S. crop workers unable to enter the country, at risk of removal, or leaving the workforce voluntarily, the real impact could be far worse.

The Department of Labor knows this. In October, it filed an interim final rule to the Federal Registrar revising how “Adverse Effect Wage Rates” are calculated for farmworkers. In the filing, the Department openly acknowledged Trump’s immigration crackdowns could mean fewer workers, higher prices, and risks to the nation’s food supply. The stated goal was to streamline hiring through the H-2A visa program.

H-2A visas allow growers to bring in temporary agricultural workers for seasonal jobs. The workers must accept set wages, lack bargaining power, and are tied to their employers. Use of the program has exploded—nearly tenfold over the past 20 years—with roughly one in five farmworkers now entering through H-2A.

The provisions of the program reminded me of the “good old days” in the mining industry when workers were provided low wages, substandard housing and forced to buy everything from the “company store.” These policies created systems of debt bondage that kept miners economically dependent and unable to leave.

Yet earlier this year, Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, argued that work requirements for Medicaid recipients would push Americans into jobs currently held by undocumented workers. Her colleagues at Labor knew better, writing:

Agricultural work remains physically demanding, often takes places in remote locations, carries health and safety risks, and typically lacks advancement opportunities -- factors that continue to discourage participation by the domestic workforce.

In plain terms: we need immigrants who are willing to do work most Americans won’t.

Senator John McCain understood this reality nearly two decades ago. In 2006, defending comprehensive immigration reform to skeptical union members, he famously said:

I’ll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season.

No one volunteered. Americans didn’t want the work then, even at nine times the prevailing wage—and they don’t want it now.

And, rather than crack down on employers who hire undocumented labor, the Trump administration’s solution is to allow farmers to pay H-2A workers less than they do now. Basically to “close the gap” between them and illegal immigrant workers. In their filing, the Labor Department said that research indicates “illegal alien workers earn between 4% and 24% less than similarly situated legal workers, giving employers a strong financial incentive to hire illegal labor.”

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the rule change could cut wages by about 10%, to roughly $15.32 an hour for low-skill workers and $18.01 for higher-skill roles.

So instead of enforcing the law against illegal hiring, we make legal workers cheaper.

United Farm Workers president Teresa Romero warns this approach will cost Americans jobs, noting that the H-2A program has no cap on worker numbers and is plagued by fraud. She points to cases where H-2A visa holders end up working not just in agriculture, but in construction and other industries.

Which brings us to the real question: has this administration overplayed its hand? If wages fall and enforcement intensifies, will foreign workers decide that seasonal farm labor in the United States simply isn’t worth it anymore?

If they do, the produce aisle may be the first place we feel it—but it won’t be the last.

Now Farnsworth is back with a revised proposal. This time, he says students could be charged for participating:

Under this version the bill SB1004, the student could still be charged whatever fee the district students have to pay for the activity. And in addition, the parent would have to pay that share of the parent’s ESA amount that is equal to … the amount the school pays for the program as a percentage of their total revenue.

The bill would allow voucher students to try out and participate in interscholastic activities at nearby public schools. Homeschooled students on vouchers are already allowed to participate. Farnsworth explained his reasoning this way:

I believe that extracurricular activities, be it the chess club or the football team, are an important part of student development and learning. And I don’t think that students should be excluded from public educational opportunities just because they’re on an ESA.

Finally—something Senator Farnsworth and I agree on. I also don’t think students should be excluded from public educational opportunities. The difference is I believe those “public educational opportunities” should belong to students who are actually attending public schools.

After all, public is commonly defined as:

• Of, or concerning the people as a whole

• Done, perceived, or existing in open view

• Of, or relating to business or community interests as opposed to private affairs

• Accessible to or shared by all members of the community

Public schools meet the intent of all these definitions, private schools (whether they be homeschools, micro-schools, parochial schools, or other private schools) do not. Private education is not of the people as a whole. It does not happen in open view. by definition, it concerns itself. It is a private affair. And it is neither fully accessible, nor shared by all members of the community.

One definition stood out to me in particular: “public” as relating to business or community interests. When I asked AI how the word “public” relates to business interests, it responded:

By defining who owns, influences, and is served by a company. In essence “public” in business signifies transparency (reporting to the public), broad ownership (shareholders), widespread impact (stakeholders), and a societal responsibility (public interest) that private entities must navigate for legitimacy and success.

Note the emphasis on “reporting to the public” and “societal responsibility.” Voucher programs—and the education they fund (often through business entitites)—are neither transparent nor accountable. It’s hard to argue they meet those standards.

That’s why the bill’s requirement that voucher students submit “class grades” to prove they meet the same educational standards required of public school athletes, is so absurd. Those grades have no validity. Voucher students are not required to be graded, nor are they required to take standardized tests. The same, of course, is true for homeschooled students.

Naturally, many parents of students on vouchers, see no problem with their children “having it all.” One homeschooling mom of her three in the Eagar area wrote this in a letter to her local school board:

Opening school sports programs to homeschooled ESA students would not only provide these students with opportunities, but could also allow the district to charge fees for sports participation, generating additional income that could be utilized to support the district’s sports programs, which often face significant funding challenges.

Right. It’s all about helping public schools make up their funding shortfalls. No acknowledgment that vouchers are helping create those shortfalls in the first place.

As Arizona’s Mingus Union High School Board (MUHS) member Will David said in an August 2025 board meeting,

ESA students draw money from the state,” David said. “That is money that because of parental choice, which I’ll always support, ultimately hurts Mingus’ bottom line because it has to do with butts in seats, the ADM — the average daily membership. Mingus is for Mingus enrolled students … that’s what we fight so hard to provide transparency to the public and make sure that we’re good stewards of the dollars that we’re allocated, which are woefully short.

David continued:

We are trying to ensure that Mingus for Mingus students is the best possible experience it can be with academic readiness at its core,” David said. “How far do we want to go to keep opening the doors for everybody who wants to have their cake and eat it, too?

I think we’re on a very slippery slope if we open the door for everybody. You’re either a student here or you’re not.

Districts across the state are now grappling with this issue. The MHUS Governing Board discussed it at their Aug 7 board meeting, where the athletic director raised concerns about the lack of guidance in AIA bylaws regarding ESA students. Board member Will David said,

The first question is whether or not we should allow ESA students at all to participate in Mingus related sports or any other activities on campus,” board member Will David said. “That’s the fundamental question … I have asked for a legal review because I’m concerned about conflict of interest issues that might be present on the board.

I don’t know what the “conflict of interest” is that David referred to, but I have heard an uncorroborated rumor that at least some of the other school board members have taken vouchers to school their children outside the school district.

Ashley Koepnic, MHUS Governing Board Vice-President said she sees no reason to deny ESA students to play at Mingus if they pay the $2,000 per season. MHUS Governing Board President Taylor Bell agreed, saying:

It’s not like these kids have a bunch of choices where we live to go play at a different school. This is one small community. What if that one home-schooled ESA kid is your star player?

Wow. So now it’s about winning games?

More likely, as I’ve said before, ESA parents want to have it all. Unlike a piano, though, they can’t buy a football field for their child’s exclusive use. Nor will participation in community leagues offer the same pathway to college athletic scholarships. For that, they need the interscholastic sports infrastructure provided by public schools.

In other words, parents who accepted ESA vouchers because public schools supposedly weren’t meeting their children’s needs have now decided they need public schools after all—because vouchers don’t provide everything they want.

The truth is, public schools don’t offer everything any parent wants. That’s largely, because they are severely underfunded. In Arizona, per pupil funding is $5,000 below the national average. A major reason is that the state is now funding two parallel systems: public district schools and private vouchers.

As Beth Lewis, Executive Director for Save Our Schools Arizona, has noted:

Sports aren’t free, and neither are vouchers. Vouchers come at a high cost to community schools, which are currently closing sports programs because they cannot afford the required coaches, uniforms, buses, bus drivers and facilities.

Charging ESA parents for their child’s participation will help, but where does this end? District leaders across the state are being forced to consider school closures due to declining enrollment. Reasons for that decline in enrollment include universal voucher expansion, lower birth rates, budget cuts, demographic shifts, and post-pandemic changes.

It isn’t hard to envision a future where the public schools that remain are largely confined to inner cities and far-flung rural areas—places where families have few realistic options to use vouchers. These schools will be increasingly under-resourced and unable to provide students the academic or other type of opportunities they deserve. Meanwhile, large numbers of children “educated” through vouchers may grow up without the foundational knowledge required to be fully functioning members of society.

I truly hope it plays out differently. But, too often, as Joni Mitchell opined in her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi”, “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone.” Why must we so often learn the hard way?

A post this morning on More Than Just Parks by Jim Pattiz described how massive public land transfers appear imminent in Idaho and Utah—and likely across much of the West. Pattiz argues that this has been the plan all along, and that “the playbook is being activated.”

“It’s not a new strategy” he writes. “It’s straight from the authoritarian playbook perfected in the 1930s Europe: Break the institution, declare it broken, and seize what was never yours. This is how democratic nations lose their public institutions.”

When it comes to K–12 public education, I would argue that the strategy to undermine our public school system began in 1983 with the release of Ronald Reagan’s A Nation at Risk. NPR reported in 2018, that “very few government reports have had the staying power of ‘A Nation At Risk’…which stoked widespread concerns about the quality of American schools. One of its most famous passages declared:

The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people.

One of the data points the report used was slipping SAT scores. The lower scores were caused by a much larger test-taking pool due to expanding educational opportunities to a broader range of the population. This meant it wasn’t just the top students, but many lower-ranked students test scores that were included thereby causing a drop in scores. Not exactly a smoking gun of proof our schools were failing.

But the details didn’t matter. The commission Reagan appointed to report on the state of public education sought to link the country’s economic woes to the state of the schools. The administration declared that the nation’s failing schools were a national-security crisis and used that to gain political advantage.

That narrative and strategy persists and has become deeply entrenched in debates over education in the United States. The report marked a pivotal moment in education policy, paving the way for the controversial No Child Left Behind in 2002 and Race to the Top in 2009 laws—both of which placed enormous stress on public schools without producing commensurate positive results.

NPR’s Anya Kamenetz reported that, according to two of the original authors, the commission did not conduct an objective assessment of the state of U.S. schools. Instead, it sought evidence to support the Reagan administration’s preexisting belief that public education was failing and used militaristic language to convince the American people:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

The real “act of war” against public education has, for decades, come from those seeking to privatize it. The playbook being used to undermine our public schools closely resembles the one Pattiz describes for stripping away public lands:

1. Starve the land agencies our schools of funding, staff, expertise, and authority.

2. Break their ability to function.

3. Point to the brokenness you engineered and declare federal stewardship the current system a failure.

4. Stoke resentment among the public against their public school teachers and administrators who now feel abandoned by the federal managers you crippled by claiming they are indoctrinating children.

5. Announce that state control parental choice, enticed to private schools by vouchers, is the only solution.

6. Transfer the land funding via vouchers.

7. Watch as GOP-led states, legislators, while welcoming significant campaign donations from pro-privateers outside their states, excited to dole out favors or simply unable to afford management, sell off what they can to private industry. expand unaccountable vouchers against the will of the voters while continuing to underfund our public schools.

Just as the assault on public lands erodes the power of the people, so too does the assault on public education. With public lands, that loss of power shows up in our diminished ability to enjoy them, protect ecosystems, and safeguard wildlife. With public schools, it appears in the erosion of local democratic control through school boards and the loss of transparent, accountable institutions that serve students, families, taxpayers, and society as a whole.

In both cases, the goal is the same: weaken public institutions until the public no longer has a say in what belongs to all of us—that which holds us together. And when nothing holds us together, we are very easy to pick apart.

At their core, public lands and public schools are promises—to future generations—that opportunity, stewardship, and self-governance matter more than profit. Allowing those promises to be broken changes who we are, and that is probably the hardest to come back from.

The author, Jonathan Chait, sets the stage with this subtitle:

Progressives used to view schools as engines of social mobility. Now they seem resigned to their failure.

My first reaction was that the line makes for effective clickbait, but is overly grim and accusatory. Every progressive I know believes deeply in the power of our public schools. Maybe not in their ability to reliably deliver an American Dream that is increasingly out of reach, but certainly in their capacity to improve students’ chances of success in life.

Chait points to what I’ll call the “Mississippi Miracle” as an example of what education reform can do. “In a mere 10 years” he writes, “the state’s fourth-grade reading scores rose from 49th place, in 2013, to the top 20, in 2023.” Yet he notes, progressive critics of education reform including Diane Ravitch and others, have questioned the reported results.

I remember reading about the “miracle” when it was first publicized. And yes, there was plenty of criticism about the supposed “cooking of the numbers” behind those remarkable gains. I honestly don’t know who to believe, but generally default to the idea that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

What bothers me about Chait’s article is his insistence that liberals hold what he calls “an eternal truth about education reform: It does not and cannot work." My own experience—as a school board member who served 12 years, a past President of the Arizona School Boards Association, and current President of Save Our Schools Arizona Network—is that just is not the case for those on the ground, doing the work.

Chait also writes that progressives are eager to debunk any apparent success in education reform. No, no, no. What we are eager to debunk are silver bullets. That’s because we know how unlikely it is that they exist. Improving educational outcomes is hard and it truly does take a village: quality teachers (the number one in-school factor affecting student success), involved parents, skilled and supportive administrators, taxpayers willing to provide local support, and legislators who properly fund the system and pass laws that allow it to thrive.

And by the way, it is a mistake to assume that high standardized test scores mean students have learned what they need to know. High-stakes testing and the accountability attached to it, has in some cases led to the unintended narrowing of curriculum and an outsized focus on the test. In addition, when taking these tests, students can choose how much effort to put in—or none at all.

I do mostly agree (except by degree) with Chait when he says that the prevailing view on the left is "that poverty and other socioeconomic disadvantages are problems too big for schools to alleviate.” I don’t however believe schools are powerless in the face of these challenges. But I do agree with Nick Hanauer, who Chait quotes:

Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income.

Study after study shows that one of the best predictors of academic success is a student’s ZIP code. In other words, students who live in wealthier areas tend to perform better. Not coincidentally, those schools usually have more resources, including the ability to attract and retain higher-quality teachers.

Chait also points to urban public charter schools as models of reform. But let’s not forget that many charter schools are able to pick and choose their students, effectively skimming the cream off the top from their public school counterparts. And to suggest that teachers’ unions loathe accountability in general is a huge overstatement. What teachers loathe is accountability based on high-stakes testing, rigid data systems, and punitive measures that are disconnected from sound pedagogical principles.

Furthermore, it isn’t just affluent parents who “dislike the stress that comes with standardized testing.” It’s every parent who cares about their child. It’s every teacher who watches students spend weeks each year in computer labs taking standardized tests instead of learning in the classroom. Teachers also know that these tests rarely provide meaningful or timely feedback to improve instruction. Needless to say, students don’t like the tests either.

Yes, progressives focus on “nicer school buildings and better teacher pay,” though I object to Chait’s use of “nicer” as a pejorative. Progressives would like to start with just safe and adequate buildings. Here in Arizona, the school facility maintenance and repair backlog exceeds $3 billion. We’ve been fighting for the state Legislature to address this since the first lawsuit was filed in 1991.

That case reached the Arizona Supreme Court in 1994, which declared the state’s school facility funding system unconstitutional. The Court required the Legislature to create a system ensuring all public schools meet minimum adequacy standards for safe and healthy buildings, addressing massive disparities between wealthy districts and poorer ones suffering from crumbling infrastructure, mold, and unsafe conditions. The Legislature provided adequate funding for only one year.

Advocates filed a second lawsuit in 2017, decided in 2025, with the same outcome. After 30 years of noncompliance, I’m not holding my breath that the Legislature will finally step up. After all, they’ve paid no price for breaking the law. That price has instead been paid by nearly three generations of Arizona students—and by our society at large.

In his final paragraph, Chait claims Democrats are now adopting the “conservative orthodoxy” that “poor kids are ineducable and that the government is helpless to improve the situation.” That is hogwash. We believe in the promise of every child and that, as written by educational philosopher John Dewey in 1899:

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.

The key word here is “community.” As I’ve said before, it takes a village. It takes leaders who think more about the next generation, than the next election. It takes a commitment to ensure teachers are well-trained, properly resourced, and trusted to do their jobs. And yes, it takes safe learning environments that show our students we care about their future. There is no easy fix, it takes all of us working together.

If we know the prescription, why can’t fix what ails our public schools? It’s because there is lots of money to be made and political power to be gained. The school privatization movement does not care about all children. It tells parents they need only care about their own. It siphons resources from public schools and public goods, fractures communities, and often provides no assurance of what students are learning or what taxpayers receive in return. It fuels polarization and, in Dewey’s prescient words: “if left unchecked, threatens our democracy.”

It’s not too late—but as more public schools close and more teachers leave the profession, we are running out of time. The answer is to vote for leaders who care about the public good, not their campaign funders.

The answer, ultimately, lies with each of us.

In a guest essay in the New York Times this morning, Stefan Merrill Block recounts his homeschooling experience, which included being forced to crawl, even at age 12. He writes he believes his mother thought homeschooling was in his best interest, but, as he explains:

It was the lack of state oversight or standards that allowed our situation. It was the laws that failed me. Today, as home-schooling numbers continue to surge, similar laws fail to protect millions of kids.

Forty-eight states still allow registered sex offenders and adults with a conviction of crimes against minors to homeschool a child. This removes the child from the observation of those who could intervene on their behalf, even when that child’s safety is being investigated by child protective services. Twelve states don’t require parents to submit any documentation to homeschool. They need only remove a child from school to allow them to no longer be subject to any mandatory state assessments or contact with officials. Seventeen other states require parents only to provide notice to the state of their intention to homeschool, also avoiding any oversight including any state-mandated assessments.

Arizona’s requirements are similarly minimal. Parents file a one-time Affidavit of Intent to homeschool to their county’s schools superintendent and must provide instruction in reading, grammar, math, social studies, and science. There is no follow-up by the state though, to ensure compliance. There are also no requirements for parent education levels, standardized testing, curriculum approval, screening for medical issues, or record keeping of any kind.

The number of homeschooled students in the U.S. is now around 3.5 million, but again, this is hard to quantify since 12 states require no documentation to do so. As Block writes,

The country has passively endorsed a nationwide system of blind spots, where the fate of home-schooled children has been left almost entirely to their parents”, in Arizona and several other states, taxpayers are now subsidizing that “system of blind spots.

Block also recounts meeting a 45-year-old woman he met who had been homeschooled in Mississippi. Her parents pulled her from public school to avoid questions about bruises on her body. Once removed “from the gaze of concerned adults” her parents continued to beat her and her siblings, locked away educational materials, and forced the children to “spend their days doing chores on the property.”

In Arizona, homeschooling parents can get vouchers (Empowerment Scholarship Accounts) of at least $7,000 per child—far more for students with special needs—to “educate” their children at home. And, the state’s voucher program is the least accountable in the nation. While there are broad guidelines for allowable purchases, expenses under $2,000 are not verified for compliance. Those providing “instruction” are not required to hold any certification or educational credentials, nor are they required to undergo fingerprinting or background checks. Even registered sex offenders can get these vouchers.

An online project titled “Homeschooling’s Invisible Children” documents hundreds of heinous cases of physical and sexual abuses of children. There are also more subtle harms: neglect, restricted access to learning, ideological indoctrination to the exclusion of other perspectives, and limitations on a child’s ability to fully function in society.

Undoubtedly, many homeschooling parents have good intentions and provide their children with a solid education. But we have no way of knowing which situations are safe and effective—and that is the heart of the problem. Even students in well-intentioned homeschooling environments often miss opportunities to learn how to interact with children who are different from them, a critical skill in an increasingly polarized and complex society.

America’s growing tendency to defer unquestioningly to “parental choice” represents a collective abdication of responsibility to our youngest citizens. And the risk is not limited to homeschooled children. Nearly 100,000 students in Arizona now attend private schools (including homeschools) using vouchers, yet those schools lack the protections in the form of civil rights, accountability and transparency required of public schools. As with homeschooling, there is no requirement that private schools publicly report information about their effectiveness or about what students are actually learning.

My bet is that this will not end well. Not for most of the students on vouchers, and certainly not for our communities, our state and our country. And unfortunately, it will take far longer to repair the damage than it did to create it.

Lewis is one of seven contributors to the book, and he opens with a quote from President John F. Kennedy:

Let the public service be a proud and lively career. And let every man and woman who works in any area of our national government, in any branch, at any level, be able to say with pride and with honor in future years: ‘I served the United States Government in that hour of our nation’s need.’

In his introduction, Lewis recalls wandering through federal agencies during the transition from the Obama to Trump administrations. He describes “a thousand or so Obama officials” waiting for the incoming team, armed with extensive briefings that had taken six months to prepare. Days after the election, however, Trump fired roughly 500 people from his transition team, telling its leader, Chris Christie, that “you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.”

As unbelievable as that sounds, almost twelve months into Trump’s second administration, it is no longer surprising. If Trump has been consistent in anything, it is his lack of interest in how government works—or who does the work. That’s why he cheered on Elon Musk charging in with his DOGE chainsaw or by Project 2025 architect Russ Vought declaring that he wanted to put federal employees “in trauma.”

According to E. Tammy Kim of The New Yorker, they have succeeded:

To be a federal worker these days is to do one’s job from inside a whirlpool. Every day is a surprise; what used to be the most stable employment has become a constant gamble. So far this year, more than three hundred thousand federal employees—of around two million total—have left government service, either voluntarily or involuntarily. (Sixty-eight thousand employees have been hired, a figure that likely includes civil servants who were fired and then brought back.) Dismissals are being contested in court. Some employees who were fired just before, or during, the shutdown, still don’t know their status. Are they employed, on administrative leave, or unemployed? Many retroactive paychecks haven’t arrived.

This isn’t just about workers losing their jobs. It’s about our democracy losing its bearings—and the long road to recovery even if we manage to correct course. As Who Is Government? shows, federal agencies are filled with everyday heroes doing selfless, often invisible work. Their achievements range from a Bureau of Mines employee who developed roof-bolt systems that prevent deadly mine collapses, to the National Cemetery Administration earning the highest customer satisfaction rating in America—public or private—for seven straight years.

One essay focuses not on a person but on a number: the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Of all the economic statistics produced the U.S. federal government, none has a direct impact on the lives of everyday Americans quite like the Consumer Price Index.”

Other essays highlight crucial work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the IRS, the National Archives, the Department of Justice, and the Food and Drug Administration.

Kim also noted remarkable achievements by federal employees across agencies:

• Department of Agriculture - drones and handheld scanners to detect toxic contaminants in food-processing plants and farms

• Health Resources and Services Administration - a program that delivered care to millions of poor, uninsured Americans with H.I.V./aids

• National Nuclear Security Administration - development of El Capitan, a supercomputer powerful enough to conduct nuclear simulations

• State Department - a system for online passport renewals

• Internal Revenue Service - revamping of call-center operations reducing wait times for taxpayers

Reading them, I couldn’t help but reflect on the profound damage the Trump administration has inflicted on these institutions and more. Yet Congress has since rescinded billions of dollars the Biden Administration allocated for such improvements. The I.R.S. alone has 25,000 fewer employees than it had at the start of 2025.

While interviewing more than a hundred federal employees fired by the Trump Administration, Kim spoke to Coleen, a 35 year old single mom who was fired from the FDA after thirteen years in federal service. After applying for and being turned down for 57 jobs—including retail positions at Trader Joe’s and Costco—she was suddenly reinstated, likely because someone realized the importance of her work ensuring that food imported from Mexico and Canada was safe from contaminants like salmonella and cyclosporiasis. Without her, she said, Alaskans couldn’t trust the food they bought at the grocery store.

And, some of these agencies and many others actually delivered a significant return to the both the government and taxpayers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established after the 2007-2008 financial crisis to ensure financial markets are fair, transparent and competitive. The Trump administration had cut almost 1,500 staff by June even though the agency has delivered a more than 3-to1 return on investment since 2011. Likewise at the Department of Health and Human Services which has now forced out over 20,000 employees. This despite a more than 25-to-1 return on investment at the Department’s National Institutes of Health alone. A total of 5,700 employees were cut at the Department of Agriculture by June, significantly hindering the fight agains bird flu. And of course, nearly all of USAID’s 10,000 employees were fired, placed on indefinite leave, or otherwise removed. The cost to human health across the globe, U.S. based organizations, and America’s soft influence is incalculable. Over 11,000 IRS employees were shown the door resulting in an estimated $500 billion in incoming revenue lost this year alone. Almost 2,000 positions were cut from the Department of Education. This despite the proven impact of federal subsidies and spending for education and job training and an over 7-to-1 return on government spending on college education.

In June, the Federal News Network surveyed current and former federal employees about the mental toll of working in the Trump administration. Of more than 3,600 respondents, 95% reported increased stress, anxiety and depression since Trump took office. One wrote: “The impacts of the uncertainty and administration’s cruelty have been brutal.” Others said morale, productivity and effort were at the lowest levels they had ever seen.

As a 22-year Air Force veteran, I have seen countless federal employees up close. Yes, some were ineffective. The vast majority though, were dedicated professionals proud to serve their country. As one respondent told FNN,

A lot of people come into government, it’s not about the money, it’s about the service and the commitment and just the security,” the DoD civilian employee said. “I don’t think people really understand the significance of the federal government and why we do what we do.

If we survive this national nightmare, perhaps there may be at least one silver lining: Americans may finally understand the true value of their government. That hope is what keeps me fighting.

A more perfect union, indeed.

Many of the experts interviewed for this story offered that the solution to equitable childcare access is not merely better funding for subsidy programs, but a transformed system that eliminates the two-tier distinctions altogether. Ideally, Garcia said, “our childcare system wouldn’t be a private business model. It would be a public good, and we would take lessons from K-12 so that we’re not overpromising and underfunding”, and “we would design the system on a needs-based model and not a profit-based model”.

Unfortunately, just like public education, that hasn’t been the direction with childcare is heading. Haspel points out that the “American childcare system, primarily a market-based, pay-to-play system, has always had inequities, but those inequities are growing ever sharper as federal pandemic-era funding, a boon to many families, has run out across the nation.”

Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, noted that the center’s ongoing survey of families is showing some of the highest rates of reported hardship since they began tracking in 2020. “The disproportionate impacts have been present for a long time, and they’re being exacerbated by the current circumstances,” Fisher explained. With hardship rising even among middle- and upper-income families, “it becomes clear that the whole system is beginning to implode”.’

Of course, the Republican budget reconciliation bill passed this summer will only make matters worse. “Medicaid and SNAP cuts will force state legislatures to use more scarce state dollars that could otherwise go to childcare.”

The Associated Press reported recently that “the government shutdown triggered a wave of closures of Head Start centers, leaving working parents scrambling for child care and shutting some of the nation’s neediest children out of preschool.” About 140 program have not received their annual federal funding, affecting programs with capacity to serve 65,000 preschooler and expectant parents. Many of these families also depend on SNAP benefits.

Haspel writes again:

Many of the experts interviewed for this story offered that the solution to equitable childcare access is not merely better funding for subsidy programs, but a transformed system that eliminates the two-tier distinctions altogether.

This brings us to public education and the “two-tier distinction” that privatization is creating. In Arizona, 20 public schools were closed in the 2023-2024 school year. The Kyrene School District in Tempe has been contemplating closing one-third of its schools and Amphitheater School District in Tucson is now considering closing 5 of its 12 elementary schools. Even schools not slated for closure continue to struggle with teacher shortages. In September 2024, there were 2,261 unfilled teaching positions in Arizona, a 30% increase since the fall of 2020. The number of non-certified teachers has increased by more than 60% since that time. In the U.S., approximately 1 in 8 teaching positions are filled by a non-certified or non-licensed teacher.

Pro-privatization advocates often blame declining birth rates or shifting educational preferences, but school vouchers—which allow private schools to choose who they admit—are largely responsible. As Beth Lewis, Executive Director of Save Our Schools Arizona, explains:

Vouchers are draining desperately needed fund from low-income schools and forcing school closures, while lining the pockets of the rich.

Over 90,000 Arizona students are now enrolled in the ESA voucher program and most never attended a public school. This represents an entirely new expense to taxpayers. In the Amphitheater School District alone, funding lost to vouchers equals $13.7 million with 87% of voucher students never having attended a public school.

“The math is simple” says Lewis,

Arizona doesn’t provide enough funding to adequately fund one school system, much less two — a public system open to all and a selective private system.

While the wealthy in America have always enjoyed privilege, what once made our country special was broad access to opportunity. That access is now increasingly limited to those with means.

The key to restoring it lies in public goods—systems that level the playing field. As Heather Tritten, president and CEO of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, put it:

It would be great to figure out how to have this conversation in a way that isn’t about just the haves and the have-nots, but about all children and the needs of all children.

Child care is just one example. Public education—open to all and accountable to the community—is another. Yet with Arizona’s per-pupil funding roughly $5,000 below the national average, and vouchers siphoning off resources, the situation is only worsening.

Ensuring children are fed, whether in school or at home, is another fundamental part of opportunity. The USDA reports that even in 2023, 7.2 million children lived in food-insecure households and the School Nutrition Association confirms that “school meals are as critical to learning as textbooks and teachers.” But with the GOP threatening to cut child nutrition programs unless healthcare concessions are made, many more children are at risk of going hungry. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has pledged to do what she can, but the $1.8M she allocated in emergency aid funds less than half of the statewide requirement for just one day.

The Arizona Center for Economic Progress blames decades of tax cuts and restrictions on raising revenue:

Thirty-plus years of tax cuts without the same ability to raise revenue when needed has taken its toll on Arizona —be it underpaid school professionals, soaring tuition at our community colleges and universities, a shortage of affordable housing, and crumbling infrastructure. It has also worsened an upside-down, unjust tax code which allows billionaires and giant corporations to pay less in state and local taxes while lower-income Arizonans pay more (as a share of their income).

The GOP remains a one-trick pony: cut taxes to shrink government. But some functions simply too essential to be left to the private sector. These are the services that sustain a healthy society—and must be available to everyone, especially in hard times.

Ronald Reagan was wrong: government is not the problem. The real issue is our unwillingness to fund it properly and to hold those responsible for its performance accountable.

Ultimately, we get the government we deserve. Right now, we’re learning some very painful lessons—ones we can only hope to take to heart before it’s too late.

“It’s a fool’s game trying to understand the president’s true motives, but do our misgivings matter if the outcome is a speedy end to the war?”

Later, when discussing efforts to stop Netanyahu from killing Palestinians, he adds:

“Motive is not the issue if the outcome is right.”

This reasoning sounds dangerously close to “the ends justify the means.” I strongly disagree. Motive matters. So does the method by which an outcome is achieved. I don’t believe Trump is motivated by a desire to save lives or promote peace. By his own admission, he’s a dealmaker and his track record makes one thing clear: his top priority is himself. He’s also quick to promise, not so great on delivering on those promises.

During a September 2024 debate with Vice President Harris of the war in Ukraine, he said:

“That is a war that’s dying to be settle. It will get it settled before I even become president.”

Now, more than 400 days later, the war is no closer to getting “settled.” In fact, Trump has changed his stance on Ukraine so many times this year that it’s created confusion and frustration among allies:

• March - He berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and paused all military aid to Ukraine.

• July - He lashed out at Putin and announced plans to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine.

• August - He invited Putin to Alaska and literally rolled out the red carpet.

• September - He appeared to side with Ukraine again, calling Russia a “paper tiger.”

• October - Despite indicating support for sending Tomahawk missiles, he denied Zelenskyy’s request after a phone call with Putin.

The whiplash is exhausting and the inconsistency has left U.S. allies in a difficult position. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on X,

“None of us should put pressure on Zelenskyy when it comes to territorial concessions. We should all put pressure on Russia to stop its aggression. Appeasement never was a road to a just and lasting peace.”

But, Trump has continually proven hesitant to put pressure on Russia and its leader whom he has said he respects because he is “a strong man.” What Trump doesn’t understand is that there are different kinds of strength. He only knows one, and that is of a bully. Any success he’s had comes from his ability to coerce, threaten, or manipulate. He treats politics like a reality show—obsessed with appearances, indifferent to substance. But in foreign policy, appearances mean little without solid groundwork. The devil—and the solution—is always in the details.

This is certainly true in the Israel-Hamas conflict. When Trump announced the ceasefire, it felt like a premature “Mission Accomplished” moment. Sure, he secured the release of 20 Israeli hostages—we should all celebrate that. Yes, he got Egypt Qatar and Turkey to sign a presidential memorandum declaring an end the war. But let’s be clear: it wasn’t a treaty. Neither Hamas nor Israel signed it, make it non-binding and effectively meaningless.

This kind of political theater is typical of Trump’s approach during his own administration. After all, getting Congress (despite his party controlling both chambers) to pass actual legislation takes effort. It’s far easier to issue executive orders that create the illusion of decisive action, even if they’re legally dubious or ultimately ineffective.

Of course, Trump can’t issue executive orders for other countries. As Jennifer Rubin noted on her The Contrarian Substack column, Trump’s strategy in brokering peace in Gaza likely relied on two things:

1. His personal financial ties to Arab potentates

2. A threat to Hamas—sign the deal or watch Netanyahu act with impunity in Gaza.

Which brings us back to motive. Trump wants to be seen as the ultimate dealmaker and he craves a Nobel Peace Prize. At the United Nations in September, he all but nominated himself, claiming:

“I ended seven wars, and in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed.”

Fact checkers quickly proved this false.

There’s little doubt Trump’s obsession with winning a Nobel Peace Prize is rooted in his envy of President Obama, who received the award in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” At the time, many questioned whether Obama had yet earned it, including Obama himself. Still, Trump is desperate to match or outdo him, perhaps even just to claim another piece of shiny gold.

But despite his boasts about ending wars, Trump has made little real progress. That’s partly because both Netanyahu and Putin benefit politically from continued conflict and have no incentive to give in to Trump’s bluster. On the other side, Hamas and Ukraine know that continued fighting is their only leverage to retain what they’ve fought for. They’ve both already invested so much.

Simon Jenkins argues that history will judge the investment by the rest of us:

“Both Gaza and Ukraine were territorial conflicts from which the west could theoretically have stayed aloof.”

Theoretically, yes. But territorial conflicts often escalate, drag on, and result in massive loss of life. When national or humanitarian interests are at stake, countries must engage through diplomacy, information, military strategy, and economic pressure. That’s certainly true in both Ukraine and Gaza.

Unfortunately, Trump has made it clear he cares more about cozying up to Putin and exploiting Ukraine’s rare metals than he does about countering Russian aggression or saving lives. He’s also expressed support for displacing Palestinians so he can build resorts in Gaza.

I’m not convinced Trump even fully grasps the stakes, especially in Gaza. But as Rhett Butler famously said in Gone with the Wind, I doubt he “gives a damn.” That attitude was summed up perfectly by one of his envoys, Jared Kushner, who said:

“Don’t talk to me about history. I’m not interested in history. We’re doing things differently here.”

Fine, we should always be open to new ideas. But as the saying goes, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

Rubin also doubts Trump’s understanding:

Trump, his lackeys, and his cultish cheering section seem not to understand that “peace” is not simply the absence of war. Conquest also achieves the end of some wars. But that is not what we are after. Peace, rather, requires renunciation of violence in favor of democratic and humanistic values. Only then do you have a lasting peace during which human beings can flourish.

And that’s the core problem. Trump has no interest in details. No patience for nuance. No commitment to the hard, unglamorous work of peacemaking.

As Matt Duss, Executive Vice-President at the Center for International Policy, said to The Guardian,

“Part of what’s bizarre is that the Trump organisation is so deeply leveraged in the Middle East that the corruption could sustain the ceasefire. Because they all stand to make so much money there is an interest and an incentive to kind of stop the war.”

But as Rubin reminds us, a ceasefire does not lasting peace make.

And Trump’s approach—transactional, self-serving, optics-driven—bears far more resemblance to conquest than diplomacy. That’s why, no matter how much he chases it, he will never earn the Nobel Peace Prize.

What’s the Democratic equivalent?

Yes, the Democratic coalition is large, diverse, and often fractured. Right now, that which most unites us is opposition to Trump. But, being against Trump is not a vision and it won’t allow us to reclaim power. We need to clearly articulate what we are for and we need to do it now.

In thinking about a Democratic counterpart to“God, Family, Country,” I landed on this: Liberty, Justice, and Opportunity.

• Liberty, because people should live free, — socially, politically, and economically — with the power to make choices and shape their own lives.

• Justice, because it demands accountability, fairness, equality, and the rule of law.

• Opportunity, because no one should be held back by the circumstances of their birth. Everyone deserves a fair shot.

I chose “liberty” over “freedom” intentionally. Freedom often implies no constraints, but liberty acknowledges rights within a framework of laws and mutual responsibility. A civil society must balance individual rights with the greater good. And despite most of us having routinely recited “liberty and justice for all” when saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, we still have a long way to go to fully deliver on this promise.

Are there other values that should matter to Democrats? Absolutely. But, in this “attention economy”, we need a message that’s short, sweet, memorable and repeatable. Let’s debate what those top three values are (briefly) and then plant a flag. Repeat them over and over and make them stick.

Of course, a slogan is not a plan. We also need to figure out the changes we want to deliver. I recently came across a Substack post by Linda Rey outlining a Democratic Project 2028. I liked some of her ideas, and began thinking more about the bold, foundational changes we need. Here’s my Top Ten Platform Priorities for Democrats:

• Get Money Out of Politics - including overturning Citizens United

• Reverse Presidential Immunity - no one is above the law

• Protect Free and Fair Elections - including Independent Redistricting Commissions in every state

• Pass Congressional Ethics Reform - including a ban on stock trading

• Make the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes

• Guarantee Universal Healthcare for All Americans

• Enact Universal Gun Safety Laws

• Overhaul Immigration Laws - including a path to citizenship

• Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment

• Strengthen Environmental Protections - to combat climate change

I’m sure every person who reads this list will note something they want to add. But, I wanted to cap the list at 10 and keep it focused on the changes that would have the widest impact on the most people. Politics is the art of compromise. No one gets everything they want.

As Jon Favreau recently said on the Ezra Klein Show , Democratic voter dissatisfaction is at an all-time high, and people are exhausted and feeling defeated. We must give Democrats something and someone to rally around. As Favreau also said:

To be a leader to change the party, you have to have a story, and you have to feel confident in it.

While some of our Democratic leaders are taking stands and speaking out, many others seem to be overthinking, over-polling, and waiting for consensus. Instead, says Favreau, we need leaders with “core conviction” - what do we believe, where should the country go? Once we know that, we can figure out how to message it. We can’t though, effectively message what we haven’t defined.

Rosalynn Carter once said:

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

So, to our Democratic leadership: get out of your heads. Plant a flag, take a stand, and yell “CHARGE!”.

We are ready to follow!

And yet, most of us have not given up. We’re still ready to fight — for our freedoms, for our democracy, and for a better future for us all. But to win, we need more than outrage. We need leadership. We need direction.

Corbin Trent, author of America’s Undoing on Substack, laid out a strategy in his article, “How to beat MAGA in 2026, 2028, and Beyond.” His plan, in a nutshell, focuses on three core pillars:

• Affordability

• Accountability

• Democracy

Trent describes his proposal as “more than a platform — it’s a pledge that binds a movement.” Candidates adopt this plan commit to:

• Build Power Together, Not Alone

• Restore Trust and Deliver Results

• Demand Equal Justice

I like it. Affordability, because at the end of the day, it’s always about the economy. Accountability, because a failure to hold people and institutions responsible is at the root of so many of our problems. And Democracy, because without we lose the very foundation upon which everything else is built.

Might Democratic leadership have an even better plan? Maybe, but if so, where is it? To be fair, some have leaders have stepped up in meaningful ways. But I’ve seen no consolidated effort to galvanize our outrage into targeted, sustainable action. And in the absence of that effort, it is easy to assume nothing is happening.

Worse still, Democratic leaders have failed to mount an aggressive, consistent pushback against Trump and his sycophantic enablers. Nor have they clearly articulated a vision for how we lead—not just oppose—once we have the opportunity to govern again. Yes, criticizing from the sidelines is easy. But this isn’t about sniping—it’s about survival. Business as usual just won’t cut it anymore.

As Joanna Golden, wrote on Daily Kos:

“The Democratic Party is running on a broken engine. We’re trying to win in 2026 with a political strategy from 1995. We’ve become reactive, bureaucratic, and outdated in a world that rewards speed, simplicity, and emotional clarity. “

She’s right. The right wing dominates the narrative not because their ideas are better, but their marketing is. Their stories resonate—even when built on lies—because they’re told with confidence, conviction, and emotional punch.

“Our biggest threat” she points out, “isn’t the opposition—it’s our refusal to evolve.”

Trump offers less of everything and “narrows the future. We win” she writes, “by becoming the party of builders, of progress, of more. While Trump continues to shrink the American Dream, we must deliver and sell a vision of inclusive, fearless expansion.”

But we can’t do that with “weak messengers speaking the wrong language.” Leaders like AOC, Mamdani, and Crockett break through the nose because they are “bold, magnetic, and unafraid.” Golden’s advice is direct and essential:

“Speak like a human. Be interesting. Sell the dream. Because in modern digital politics, being right isn’t enough - you have to be irresistible.”

That doesn’t describe the communication style of Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries. Both overly cautious and calculated — measured voices that are out of step with the outrage and urgency so many Americans feel.

Reasonable, patriotic Americans (Democrats, Independents and yes, even some Republicans) do not support the current trajectory of this country. Democratic leaders must do more than oppose MAGA extremism. They must lay out a compelling plan to build a future that works for all of us—not one gilded in fake gold and designed to serve a privileged few.

Just as the time for restraint is over, so is the time of general resistance. We need a vision, a plan to get us there, and a charismatic leader to step up and galvanize our outrage in a way that brings us back from the abyss.