Trump is Crumbling

 May 26,2026

Bt Marc Cooper

Donald J. Trump has been a disaster so often with such regularity that it has become difficult to distinguish between bad weeks and very bad weeks. This last week has been downright catastrophic for The Boss, his enablers and acolytes and possibly for the immediate future of the republic.

Bad for Trump. Bad for MAGA. Bad for whatever normie Republicans are still out there and threatening to our democracy not to speak of the rest of the world. 

Appearances can be misleading and often contradict reality. Flexing his sagging muscles, Trump appeared as strong as ever in influencing recent GOP primaries by financing and dragging across the finish line a number of retro-MAGA screwballs against somewhat more rational Republicans (this is actually good for the rest of us as the flying monkeys are easier to beat in the November general elections).

This is against a more ominous background of his poll numbers continuing to node dive, now into Bush 08 territory and heading quickly toward the dark hole of Nixonland, the high 20’s. It’s a pity Trump is not running for a third term as he would be crashed by Democratic dog cathcher of East Jesus, Missourri in 2028. Trump has never ben stronger with MAGA, but MAGA has never been weaker or more fragmented. And decomposing. 

As is president Trump -- as both his official policies and his late night Truth Farts, not to mention his public speaking descend ever deeper into MADNESS. The Trump-MAGA train crash took on consequential proportions when a handful of Senate Republicans, including high-profile MAGAS refused to give him the 51 Senate votes to finally fund ICE, essentially aping the position of the Democrats.

Yes, you heard that right, Republicans denied Trump the votes he needs to keep funding ICE. The rather meek Senate leader John Thune dealt him the humiliating blow of sending the Senate off for a two week vacation, perhaps cutting short the chance of eventually approving the funding before the early voting in the midterms. 

That’s after the Republicans were forced to pull the $1.8b heinous slush fascist fund out of the big reconciliation bill aimed at aggrieved Trumpanzees who claim the Biden Justice Department was weaponozed against them. B;these fine patriots to plead guilty. As the DOJ also convinced 100% of the judges involved in hunfreds odtrial Translation: Trump want to hand loads of cash to the 1600 convicted hooligans a,omg whom not a single conviction was overturned. 

First, he pardoned them. Now he wants to give them 100 grad reward each. Madness?Yes. But there’s a more sinister motive In play here. Yjey may be what some analysts like Ruth Ben-Ghiat call “retatiners.”

” Such retainers are common in organized crime and autocratic corruption around the world. I agree with former national security operative Steven Cash’s assessment that the “settlement” “resembles the kind of state-funded loyalty network or private militia support system often seen under rising authoritarian regimes overseas.” The idea of MAGA as a revolution that continues the energies of 1776 was integral to the Stop the Steal movement that fueled January 6 and served as a recruiting and radicalization ground for those who assaulted the Capitol and wanted to harm Republicans and Democrats alike. 1776 rhetoric and images run through in the January 6 documentary Fight Like Hell (Jon Long, 2024) which follows the flow from Stop the Steal to the tragic events of that day (I consulted on the film)… 

While the U.S. armed forces is to all appearances doing Trump’s bidding, and ICE is developing in the direction of being a state-funded revolutionary guards operation, there is nothing like having a private militia that is loyal to you personally. With this slush fund, Trump signals to violent extremists that their service to him has not ended. “America could evolve into a national brand of electoral autocracy in which election subversion is backed up by grassroots violence,” I wrote in the fall of 2021. The 2026 midterms could present an opportunity for this militia in the making to serve the leader again.” 

One day, Signore Bomgiorno, I mighi call on you some day for a favor,” Vito Corleone said to a small time supplicant mortician who needed The Godfather’s help in getting a suitore of his daughter busted up. 

Republians, and everybody else, previously rasied enough hell over Trump’s jaw dropping movr to pay himself $10b dollars for psychological damage by Biden. That one never sood a chance. Congress, neither seems very excited, about provding the extra $100b in taxpayer funding for his Marie Anoinette ball room, Ain’t gonna happen—at least at nowwhere that level. 

And now we have more, not a lot, but more MAGAS saying they will no longer go ahead with funding the collapsing war on Iran and are ready to join Democrats in approving the restrictive war powers act. Trump can’t wait to get free of that Booby Trap that Netanyahu and Hegseth lured him into. But there’s a problem: there is no exit accept a humiliating retreat which Trump could likely precede with one more massive bombardment so he can claim Mission Accomplished.

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/thecoopscoop/p/trump-is-slowly-crumbling?

Business "Leaders" Fail at Public Education

Diane Ravitch. 

Let’s state a simple fact: there is NO EVIDENCE that Common Core will improve education or test scores. It was launched in 2010. It has been tested in many states, and test scores have collapsed. Why the stubborn insistence that it will raise American test scores compared to the rest of the world or prepare all students for college and career? There is no evidence for this stubborn belief. If businessmen acted this way in their own corporations, every one of their products would be untested. Their gasoline would cause engines to explode, their buildings would collapse, their software would be fraught with bugs, and their hardware would melt. And they wouldn’t understand why. They would keep insisting that we have to keep doing the same things over and over. At least their customers would have a choice, unlike American parents and children, who are forced to endure Common Core despite their protests.

First, our schools are NOT failing. Test scores on the NAEP are at their highest point ever, for all groups of students, including whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Scores on NAEP rose steadily since the 1970s until NCLB went into effect; then the rate of gains slowed. But in 2015, the NAEP scores went flat or declined, when the full force of NCLB , Race to the Top, and Common Core converged. Repeat, our schools are NOT failing, but our policymakers have rained chaos and disruption on them since 2001.

Second, we have heard this claim about “our failing schools” since 1983, when the Reagan-era report “A Nation at Risk” was published to moaning and groaning. We have been warned again and again that the schools were harming our economy. Yet our economy has grown since 1983. The biggest harm to our economy has come not from our schools but from major corporations outsourcing jobs to other countries where labor is cheaper, not better.

California schools are failing all our kids

California schools are failing all our kids
Focus on a state racial gap ignores some of the nation's worst overall test scores.
By John Rogers and Jeannie Oakes

November 20, 2007

State schools Supt. Jack O'Connell hosted a summit in Sacramento last week of 4,000 educators, policymakers and experts. He asked them to confront California's "racial achievement gap" -- the persistently lower test scores of California's African American and Latino public school students compared with their white and Asian peers. In 125 packed sessions, participants probed causes of the gap and offered strategies to close it. O'Connell asked them to "honestly and courageously face this pernicious problem," and for two days, the capital was abuzz with ideas, energy and even some hope.

Strikingly, the state's other "achievement gap" was barely mentioned at the summit; this is the gap between California and the rest of the nation.

The most recent results from the National Assessment of Education Progress test (popularly known as "the nation's report card") place California's fourth- and eighth-graders below those in nearly every other state in math and reading achievement. (Although California's math scores have improved over the last decade, so have the scores in the rest of the country.)

This national achievement gap affects students across the state regardless of their race. If we don't address both the racial and national achievement gaps, it's hard to imagine solving either one

For example, for years, people have been describing and lamenting California's general decline in education. We've all heard it. Test scores of California's Latino and African American students are, on average, among the lowest in the country. However, white students don't do well either, and by a wide margin: California's white eighth-graders score below white eighth-graders in every state but West Virginia and Nevada on the NAEP reading test.

In other subjects and at other grades, California's white students score below white students in most other states.

Is there a problem with California's white students? Do they or their parents care less about education than white students in Connecticut or Iowa? No one asks these questions about white students. Yet many people have no qualms about offering "culture" or "family background" as the main reason for the underperformance of Latino and African American students.

In a report released this month by UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, we offer a different explanation, one that covers the learning problems of minority students and white students, which we call the "opportunity gap." What this means is that California is significantly behind most other states in providing fundamental learning opportunities, period. Conditions here are bad for all students on average, no matter their race or ethnicity, and on top of that, they are worse for African American and Latino students. Yet these are problems that are readily identified and fixable.

On average, California middle and high school teachers are responsible for almost 50% more students than teachers across the nation. California has a critical shortage of well-trained math teachers even as it expects students to meet math curriculum standards that are among the highest in the country. And when students are struggling, they are unlikely to get help. Public high school students lack sufficient access to counselors -- on average, there is one counselor for every 556 students, the lowest ratio in the nation. Our middle school students have even less access to counselors, with one for every 753 students.

In addition, middle and high schools enrolling the highest proportion of Latino and African American students are far more likely to be overcrowded or lack college prep courses than majority white and Asian schools. Middle schools serving more than 90% Latino and African American students are 22 times more likely than majority white and Asian schools to experience a severe shortage of qualified teachers.

California's educational standards were designed to produce a highly educated workforce for a technology-based economy and a well-informed citizenry. But achieving these standards is not a simple matter of motivating teachers, students and parents to "try harder." California has not invested in its schools at a level commensurate with its standards, and our core educational infrastructure is incapable of providing the opportunities these goals demand.

Truly closing the racial achievement gap and the national achievement gap will require directing new resources to those students who are most deprived of fundamental learning opportunities.

John Rogers and Jeannie Oakes are the co-directors of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.