VOUCHING FOR ANTI-VOUCHER BILL The rules around the new Federal education voucher program, which uses taxpayer money to fully refund individual donations to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs), thereby using public funds to pay for private schools, have yet to be published, but there’s been a lot of activity around the issue. On April 15, Arizona’s Senator Mark Kelly and Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono, joined by 28 co-sponsors, introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, a bill to repeal the program. In addition to endorsing that legislation, In the Public Interest has issued a policy considerations paper and a resource guide and urged states to opt out of the optional program (as some already have, such as Wisconsin and Minnesota).

REIMAGINING PRIVATIZATION In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen was a guest on a recent episode of the podcast Citation Needed entitled, Manufactured Austerity and the Media Assisted ‘Public-Private Partnership’ Rip-Off. “Reagan failed. He was not able to privatize much,” he told the hosts, in a far-ranging but concise overview of the history of privatization. “It was really Clinton that was the key privatizer.”

PRIVATIZATION THREAT LEVEL: ORANGE The problem with an administration that seems bent on privatizing as many public goods as it can is that, even when it says it doesn’t plan to, it’s hard to take comfort in the denial. Because the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is no longer not the blueprint of this administration (as had been previously asserted by Trump), many protectors of public goods and services still have worries that budget slashing leading to privatization is the long-game strategy for parts of the VA, SNAP eligibility determinations, public lands, including National Parks, and the Postal Service, despite claims to the contrary (such as the postmaster general’s regarding the Postal Service). It didn’t seem like protecting air travel would be a candidate for corporate takeover at one point not too long ago, but here we are. 

NO LONGER LIVING ON BORROWED TIME The Trump administration’s attempt to gut the Institute of Museum and Library Services has been beaten back officially in court. “The settlement, reached by the Justice Department last week, affirms that the agency will continue issuing grants and operating its programs, which provide support to institutions in every state and territory,” the New York Times reports. “The Trump administration reaffirmed that it had reinstated all previously canceled grants, in keeping with a separate legal ruling last year, and reversed all staff reductions. It also promised not to take any further steps to reduce the agency.”

ENDQUOTE: “One thing privatization devotees always fail to take into account is the fact that the average American corporation has the public conscience of a pesticide.”–journalist Charles P. Pierce, writing in Esquire.