Sam Schulz

miamiherald.comHow Byron and Erika Donalds’ wealth hinges on millions in state education dollarsErika Donalds’ companies have received $30 million from state-funded charter schools, and expect another $15.7 million this year.

Having charter schools contract with outside management companies closely related to them is an old trick that allows their corporate leaders to enrich themselves while avoiding public scrutiny of spending. It’s a well-used tactic in CA, one the @sandiegouniontribune.com has reported on extensively.

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social

"Five state-funded charter schools have paid more than $30 million to private companies run by Erika Donalds, whose husband is Florida’s GOP candidate for governor." And one of her companies is set to be paid an additional $15.7 million in the upcoming year. www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

myworkdaycenter.wd5.myworkdayjobs.comWatchdog EditorSummary: The San Diego Union-Tribune is seeking an experienced, ambitious editor to run its watchdog and government coverage, driving a focus on accountability coverage across the newsroom and leading...

Cat’s out of the bag: I’m leaving the @sandiegouniontribune.com for new adventures in journalism now that I’m in Mass.! More TK soon — but for now, the U-T is hiring my successor to lead watchdog coverage. This is a phenomenal team & the best job I’ve ever had, & I’m happy to field any questions:

wsj.comExclusive | Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With Fugitives Ahead of High-Stakes Texas Senate RaceTrump backed the scandal-plagued Paxton in one of the riskiest bets of the midterms

“Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S.” And one, “a healthcare executive, had donated $190K to Paxton … including $25K days after he was indicted.”

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social

Place: Dubai Date: New Year’s Eve 2024 Noteworthy because: Ken Paxton was partying “with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

myworkdaycenter.wd5.myworkdayjobs.comReporterSummary: The San Diego Union-Tribune is seeking an ambitious, accomplished, and tenacious reporter to join its Watchdog team and hold power to account in California’s second-largest city and beyond. T...

10 Sept

I wish I didn’t have such a lousy news peg for these job postings just about every time — but if anybody just caught up in the new McClatchy layoffs is looking for their next move, well… >>

Sam Schulz@sam-schulz.bsky.social

Journalism job alert: I’m hiring two reporters at the @sandiegouniontribune.com — one to cover San Diego communities (this is a great beat) and one focused on investigative and enterprise reporting with our watchdog team. Here’s the watchdog job… myworkdaycenter.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/MNG/jo...

10 Sept

myworkdaycenter.wd5.myworkdayjobs.comReporterSummary: The San Diego Union-Tribune is seeking an ambitious, resourceful, thoughtful and tenacious reporter to cover and serve the diverse communities of California’s second-largest city and beyond. ...

10 Sept

…and here’s the San Diego communities reporter job listing: myworkdaycenter.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/MNG/jo... Whether you’re interested in one of the 2 jobs or know somebody who might be, please apply & share! And reach out with any questions.

burnsnotice.comHere's How the WNBA Can Win the Anti-Trans ControversyThe league has a golden opportunity to make a definitive and educational point about trans athletes–if it has the courage to do it

10 Aug

“It’s the old standard that worked perfectly fine before the transphobic panic … This policy will keep bad-faith attention-seekers at bay without giving the anti-trans activists what they want: an official definition of womanhood that doesn't include trans women & a full ban on trans women players.”

Katelyn Burns@katelynburns.com

For my newsletter, I spelled out once simple trick for the WNBA to shut down that transphobic publicity stunt by two former NBA players: www.burnsnotice.com/heres-how-th...

Sam Schulz reposted

John Schwartz

@jswatz.bsky.social

7 Aug

Bigotry and persecution against people serving honorably. “It’s in a lot of ways a public humiliation ritual,” Ms. Rashid said in an interview. “Going in, I had hoped I was paranoid, and boards’ outcomes were not predetermined. It turned out to be much worse than I thought.”

nytimes.comInside the Secretive Boards Deciding Trans Troops’ Fate (Gift Article)The Pentagon is relying on closed-door hearings to kick out transgender service members. An Army Reserve lawyer is one of the few who have seen how they really work.

Sam Schulz reposted

Christopher Mims

@mims.bsky.social

13 July

Great piece from @mattdpearce.com on why America has less community than ever, especially on the left: People don't like the downsides of tight-knit groups. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/how-much-c...

mattdpearce.substack.comWhat if people just prefer bowling alone?Civic renewal in the isolation of American democracy.

boltsmag.orgOne Step Forward, Two Steps Back for Solitary Reforms in California - BoltsCalifornia officials dial back the minor reforms they've made to isolation in prison, four years after Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to rein in solitary confinement.

16 July

"The reversals have validated advocates’ earlier fears about Newsom’s decision to let the prison system handle its own reforms, rather than imposing legislative guardrails. They come at a time of reduced judicial oversight, too." Via @psfrench.bsky.social @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/california-d...

sandiegouniontribune.comThe teen activists working to end solitary confinement in San Diego County‘We do want a fundamental restructuring,’ says the founder of Youth to End Solitary SD. His group will sit down Wednesday with Sheriff Kelly Martinez.

17 July

Meanwhile, in San Diego, where a number of people have died in jail in isolation cells, these high schoolers are bringing the fight against solitary in county jails to their sheriff and other elected officials: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/07/15/t...

sandiegouniontribune.comKelly Davis, intrepid reporter who exposed death and despair in San Diego County jails and gave voice to the downtrodden, dies at 53The 2023 San Diego journalist of the year beat cancer for more than a decade before being diagnosed with a new tumor earlier this year; she leaves a lasting legacy in her adopted hometown.

2 July

Kelly was an extraordinary, wise, inspiring, deeply compassionate reporter who made so many of us better journalists & better people, & who made so many lives richer. I can’t quite believe she’s gone. But please read this beautiful obituary by her longtime collaborator @byjeffmcdonald.bsky.social.

Sam Schulz reposted

Julia Métraux

@juliametraux.bsky.social

3 May

A general FYI if you're debating whether or not to email a journalist saying you like their article, email them. Trust me, those who don't like what we write are quick to do so. The compliments are a nice balance.

Sam Schulz reposted

Nolan Hicks

@ndhapple.bsky.social

28 Apr

Damning detail in here: CBS had managed to secure a visa to get into Iran and Bari opted not to send anyone.

Status@status.news

A major shakeup at CBS News’ London bureau comes after months of behind-the-scenes friction with Bari Weiss, Status has learned—raising serious questions about the future of the network’s international reporting. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/bari-weiss...

status.newsBari’s London CallingA major shakeup at CBS News’ London bureau comes after months of behind-the-scenes friction with Bari Weiss, Status has learned—raising serious questions about the future of the network’s internationa...

sandiegouniontribune.comSan Diego’s war over Liberty Station is coming to a head. Here’s how the city hopes to win.The City Council is set to approve complex deals Tuesday that aim to cement city ownership, even as a management company fights to force it to sell.

8 Mar

Who should own Liberty Station? San Diego is escalating its war to hang onto the sprawling complex of artist studios, parks, food & retail — even as a developer tries to force it to sell. As for why this is happening? Blame the aftermath of CA's dissolution of redevelopment agencies 14 years ago:

sandiegouniontribune.comUCSD professors wanted money to research telepathy. They turned to Jeffrey Epstein.‘I don’t have a problem with my lab being funded by Epstein,’ one wrote to another.

8 Mar

"I don’t have a problem with my lab being funded by Epstein," one neuroscientist told a colleague. "Thank you for your interest & support," a neurologist wrote Epstein. Epstein's UCSD ties go much deeper than previously reported — & involve funding fringe research with autistic kids, emails show.

8 Mar

Interestingly, UCSD says it has no record of any such research going before its IRB. But two mothers of kids who were subjects of the research — which Epstein gave $$ to, but not via the university — told us the neuroscientist conducting it tested their kids on campus. He did not respond to us.

sandiegouniontribune.comJim Desmond moves to run for a different seat in Congress — Darrell Issa’sThe Republican supervisor withdrew from the race in a neighboring district. Issa, a longtime GOP congressman, wouldn’t say if he’s still running for re-election.

6 Mar

Is Darrell Issa's career in Congress over? His seat was redrawn in Dems' favor, his $$ has lagged, he hasn't yet filed, today's the deadline & yesterday, Jim Desmond, the GOP supervisor running in a nearby seat, pulled papers to switch to Issa's. Issa's response: "Don’t owe you anything nothing no."

sandiegouniontribune.comSupreme Court sides with Escondido teachers in ongoing lawsuit over transgender student privacy, parents’ rightsA federal appeals court is still considering whether parents have a right to be informed of possible changes to their child’s gender.

3 Mar

So many other outlets get this story wrong. Long before the Supreme Court weighed in on Mirabelli v. Olson on its shadow docket, Kristen Taketa's been covering it with care for @sandiegouniontribune.com & getting it right from the beginning. Here's our story. And here's what's gotten missed... 🧵

sandiegouniontribune.comSchools can’t be forced to tell parents when students are transgender, new law saysThe law from Assemblymember Chris Ward, a Democrat representing San Diego, aims to prevent the ‘forced outing’ of LGBTQ students

3 Mar

First: California law does not bar teachers from telling parents when they think that a kid is trans or gender-nonconforming or that their gender presentation has changed. The only state law on this is one by @chriswardca.bsky.social that only bars districts from REQUIRING schools to tell parents.

3 Mar

This lawsuit concerns not that law — which wasn't even on the books when the Escondido teachers first sued — but rather a district-level policy that barred teachers from telling parents. The district policy, since changed, was based on state guidance. That state guidance is also no longer.

2 Mar

This is exciting. The 2 years I lived by the future D extension (when they were tunneling between La Brea & Fairfax), this stretch of Wilshire sorely needed human-scale, integrated transit & public spaces to revive those desolate, highway-like blocks of barely-punctuated facades. So much potential!

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burnsnotice.comThere Will Never Be a Sista Soulja Moment for Trans RightsBut that won't stop Democrats from trying for it anyway In the midst of the 1992 presidential election, future president Bill Clinton visited Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition conference and delivere...

18 Feb

"These are boutique issues. If you're basing your vote solely on who treats trans people more poorly, you don't really suffer from any real problem ... What the fuck do you mean you're voting for whoever prevents whether some trans 6th grader from playing soccer with her friends?" @katelynburns.com

Katelyn Burns@katelynburns.com

For my newsletter, I wrote about why the media is so thirsty for Democrats to have a "Sista Souljah Moment" and repudiate trans issues. www.burnsnotice.com/there-will-n...

irishtimes.com‘It’s surreal’: US sanctions lock International Criminal Court judge out of daily lifeCanadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards, transfer money or book everyday services in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary

2 Jan

“I can’t think of any other way to describe it but an attack on the independence of the judiciary and the International Criminal Court’s independence as an institution.” Prost was sanctioned because she’d ruled to OK an investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes. www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

nytimes.comCuomo Blasts Mamdani for His Rent-Stabilized Unit. But He Had One, Too.

29 Oct 2025

“Cuomo began renting the Sunnyside apartment in 1982 while working as a campaign manager for his father’s run for governor… After his father became governor in 1983, he worked as one of his aides, taking a salary of $1 a year.” How did the son of the then-governor pay his stabilized rent on that?

Nolan Hicks@ndhapple.bsky.social

"Cuomo Blasts Mamdani for His Rent-Stabilized Unit. But He Had One, Too: Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo lived in what he once described as “a dump, just one long hallway.'" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/n...

Sam Schulz reposted

The Verge

@theverge.com

16 Oct 2025

Trans rights and the internet itself are in a moment of crisis. What happens next? Our special series, The Future of Being Trans on the Internet, is now live in its entirety. You can check out each piece in our beautiful hub, or join us on a quick scroll 🧵

theverge.comThe future of being trans on the internetThe internet has long been a source of information and support for transgender people. Now, trans rights and the internet itself are in a moment of crisis. What happens next?

sandiegouniontribune.com‘This isn’t right’: Teachers question priorities, track record of Learn4Life charter schoolsThe network’s model has drawn criticism of its effectiveness, and some teachers described its schools as more focused on funding than on results.

The Learn4Life charter school network enrolls 20k of CA's most vulnerable teens. But its stated mission of helping students succeed may be at odds with what teachers suggest it's best at: steering public money to an obscure nonprofit. I'll explain. 1/x www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/10/05/t...

One teacher specifically took issue with the expansion, given these results: “Their model doesn’t work, & it shouldn’t be used elsewhere until it works.” For now, the expansion is only in other states: For 5+ years, CA has banned opening new non-classroom-based charters to buy time to make reforms.

sandiegouniontribune.comIn Learn4Life charter school network, millions of taxpayer dollars get spent by one private corporationLifelong Learning operates outside state transparency laws, despite its outsize role in managing the schools and despite the millions it reaps in public funding.

Many issues L4L highlights — related-party transactions, lax oversight by small rural authorizers, entities that run schools avoiding transparency — are familiar for CA charters. But oversight efforts keep failing. Reforms the moratorium aimed to buy time for haven't materialized. It lifts Jan. 1.

That adds up: Lifelong Learning’s assets doubled from $18M to $36M in 3 years. It's using them to expand in other states. As in CA, the out-of-state schools' boards are controlled by one entity tied to Lifelong Learning — this one Educational *Improvement* Corp, not Educational Advancement Corp.

And as in CA, Learn4Life schools elsewhere graduate fewer kids than other schools with similar populations. L4L schools in CA graduated 29% of students within 5 years, compared to 54% for all alternative high schools. For out-of-state L4L schools, it's 9% to 35%. (L4L takes issue with this metric.)

Watchdogs have warned about such arrangements — in which the client is controlled by a party related to one that financially benefits. (It's a regular issue in CA charter world.) They raise questions of whether school boards are doing what's best for students or for the entity that controls them.

As for the financial benefits, Lifelong Learning takes a cut of each school's revenue — so the more ADA funding schools can get out of students & teachers, the more Lifelong Learning collects. School admins wouldn't say how much they pay Lifelong Learning. But documents suggest 14-15% of revenue.

It also plays an outsize role in running each school: It handles their finances, PR, facilities, recordkeeping, planning & financial reporting. It gets first right of refusal for potential admin contracts. It helps develop schools' educational models & curricula & prepare school board agendas.

Nearly all the schools' boards are controlled by one obscure entity called Educational Advancement Corporation w/ close ties to Lifelong Learning. And each school is governed by one of a constellation of entities with one thing in common: They pay & are largely managed by Lifelong Learning.

Lifelong Learning insists it’s not a charter management organization but rather a vendor, and therefore isn’t subject to public records law. California’s school auditing agency has said otherwise. But Lifelong Learning rejected our requests for board meeting and financial records on that basis.

Still, because it’s a nonprofit, there are things we know: We know it paid multiple executives >$400K a year. We know it paid its cofounder >$600K a year. We know it hired at least 3 of his relatives in high-paying exec jobs. And we know it’s one of CA’s top spenders on education lobbying.

We asked Learn4Life about it, their lawyer accused us of not understanding how schools are funded & said the question could “mislead the public into believing that L4L is breaking the law, which is categorically false.” This was the most specific a response we got from them on anything. 7/x

So who's behind Learn4Life, & where is all that public money going? Hundreds of millions of it is going to one obscure private corporation that effectively manages much of the schools’ operations — Lifelong Learning Administration Corporation. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/10/06/i...

And kids don’t have to show up to count as attending. ADA is measured by how much work they do. “Even if the student barely did enough work to count as 1 day’s worth of work, the students & teachers were strongly encouraged to sign off for the entire [~20-day] learning period,” a teacher said. 5/x

Speaking of ADA, some Learn4Life schools filed ADA numbers even higher than the total number of students enrolled *at any point in a calendar year.* At one, the disparity was >800 kids — worth >$10M. We asked state auditing officials about it. They said it’s so unusual it merits investigation. 6/x

What schools really cared about, teachers said, was posting high average daily attendance, or ADA — the basis for school funding in California. “You gotta get ADA. That was the real driver,” one said. But they had qualms about how they say they were expected to do it.

The model Learn4Life schools use is non-classroom-based (kids mostly work remotely) and independent-study (kids don't attend remote classes but rather complete assignments on their own). To some teachers, that lack of structure was especially tough for their vulnerable student population. 4/x

First up: The education. Kristen Taketa spoke with a dozen current and former teachers and administrators. They shared a sense of frustration at their schools’ priorities and regret at the schools' track records. 2/x