🎓 "Full-Fledged Assault" - TUSD Superintendent Reveals Trump Administration's War on Public Schools | BUCKMASTER
Dr. Dennis Hoffman exposes deficit delusion as TUSD loses $6 million in crucial programs
Based on the Buckmaster Show for 7/7/25, a daily radio show in Tucson, AZ, interviewing local newsmakers. Analysis and opinions are my own.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
🧠 Three smart adults discussed on a 📻 show how America's 💵 problems are getting worse because politicians keep ⚖️ cutting taxes for the 🤑 while spending 💸 a lot, which is like trying to fill a 🛁 while pulling the drain 🕳️.
Meanwhile, 🏫 in Tucson are losing $6M that paid for after-school 🏫📚 programs that helped kids with 📄 and gave working 👨👩👦 a safe place for their children.
Even 🍁🇨🇦 don't want to visit 🇺🇸 anymore because they think our politics are 😡, which hurts businesses that depend on 👥. The school superintendent has to install 🛡️🪟 to keep kids safe while losing the 👩🏫 and 📚 that help kids learn.
🗝️ Takeaways
💸 Federal deficit ballooned from 30% to 125% of GDP since 1980s "borrow and spend conservative" policies began
🎒 $6 million in TUSD federal education funding eliminated, affecting after-school programs in 24 schools
🍁 Canadian tourism to US down 37% due to political toxicity, despite favorable exchange rates
🏫 TUSD implementing bullet-resistant windows and emergency badge systems while losing academic support staff
📈 Markets confused by tariff uncertainty, preventing business investment planning
🚌 TUSD expanding universal bus transportation to combat enrollment challenges
🗳️ Critical override election needed to restore education services cut by federal policies
🌍 International "buy America" sentiment declining due to diplomatic hostility
When Tax Cuts Meet Reality: Education Takes the Hit While Economics Wobble
As an Indigenous Chicano voice navigating the treacherous terrain of Trump's second term, I find myself chronicling the collision between conservative economic fantasy and progressive educational reality. The July 8th Buckmaster Show delivered a masterclass in truth-telling that should be required listening for anyone wondering how we got to this dystopian intersection of deficit denial and educational demolition.
The airwaves crackled with uncomfortable truths as host Bill Buckmaster welcomed three guests who collectively demolished decades of conservative economic mythology.
From Arizona State University's Dr. Dennis Hoffman dissecting deficit delusions to financial advisor Shelly Fishman's forensic examination of fiscal fraud, culminating in TUSD Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo's devastating revelation of education under federal assault—this wasn't just talk radio, it was economic enlightenment disguised as afternoon entertainment.
The Deficit Prophet Speaks: Dr. Dennis Hoffman's Uncomfortable Arithmetic
Calling in from the climatically sensible Seattle area (even economists know when to flee Arizona's July inferno), Dr. Dennis Hoffman delivered economic reality with the precision of a surgeon and the bluntness of a sledgehammer. As Director of the Center for Competitiveness and Prosperity Research at ASU, Hoffman has spent decades watching Arizona's fiscal follies unfold with the detached horror of a climate scientist watching glaciers melt.
"We've been adding to the deficit with most of our tax legislation ever since the early 80s," Hoffman explained, his voice carrying the weariness of someone who's been shouting mathematical truths into the political void for forty years. "I like to make the joke that the momentum of the tax-and-spend liberals was replaced by the borrow-and-spend conservatives."
Because nothing says "fiscal responsibility" like spending money you don't have while cutting the taxes that would pay for it—it's like going on a shopping spree after burning your credit cards.
This isn't just academic abstraction affecting some theoretical future generation. For Indigenous and Chicano communities already struggling with underfunded schools, healthcare deserts, and infrastructure neglect, this deficit delusion directly translates to diminished services and depleted opportunities.
When Hoffman notes that debt has ballooned from 30% of GDP in 1980 to "100 and a quarter or something like that" today, he's describing the mathematical trajectory of a nation that has systematically chosen wealthy tax breaks over working-class investment.
The international tourism decline Hoffman highlighted—"37% down a Canadian visitor's air travel"—reveals something deeper than economic statistics. When our closest neighbors choose Costa Rica over California, Mexico over Montana, we're witnessing the global consequences of nationalist toxicity. As someone whose family has roots on both sides of artificially imposed borders, I recognize the bitter irony: the same policies that demonize Mexican immigrants are driving away Canadian tourists, proving that xenophobia is economically stupid regardless of which direction it points.
"I am concerned about the image of America, travel to America, buy America," Hoffman continued with academic understatement. "Those have been strong themes for us and helped bolster our economy over the years. And I just don't know how buy America is bearing in places like Europe and Asia... the amount of ill will that we may be creating with these policy actions is unknowable at this point. But it's likely not good."
For Arizona's economy, which depends heavily on tourism, international students, and cross-border commerce, this image erosion hits particularly hard. Our Indigenous tourism sites, our Chicano cultural festivals, our border communities that have thrived on international exchange—all suffer when America becomes globally synonymous with hostility rather than hospitality.
Shelly Fishman's Financial Reality Check: The "Big Beautiful Bill" Exposed
Returning from Alaska's pristine wilderness with the clarity that only distance from political toxicity can provide, financial advisor Shelly Fishman delivered perhaps the most devastating critique of conservative economic theology since John Kenneth Galbraith skewered supply-side economics.
"Last week on the show, I was immoderate and called it some of the worst legislation I could imagine. And I haven't changed my mind about that one bit," Fishman declared, referring to what he refused to dignify with Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" branding. "The only beneficiaries of this bill are people who don't need the charity. There are people in the upper tax brackets or corporations that have done just fine and would do just fine in a continuing strong economy."
Because apparently the only people struggling in America are billionaires who desperately need another tax break to afford their third yacht.
Fishman's explanation of fiscal fundamentals should be tattooed on every Republican forehead: "If you're going to spend, but all you want to do is cut taxes and rely on some phantom growth thing that's going to happen over time and never really has, we've always had good growth, but it certainly hasn't been as an effect of tax cuts... they just aren't paying for it."
This matters intensely for communities of color, who historically receive the smallest share of tax cut benefits while bearing the largest burden of service cuts. When conservatives slash education funding while gifting corporations billions, they're essentially robbing public schools to pay private shareholders—a transfer of wealth from brown and Black children to predominantly white boardrooms.
The market's schizophrenic response to tariff threats, as described by Fishman, reveals the deep uncertainty plaguing business planning. "Markets were equal to just a bit above their high points from February... then the administration started talking about sending letters. Registered mail," he noted with sardonic precision. Companies can't invest in domestic manufacturing when they are uncertain whether trade policy represents negotiating bluster or economic reality.
For border communities like ours, where families have operated cross-border businesses for generations, this uncertainty isn't academic—it's devastating. When Fishman observed that businesses are essentially being asked to "invest big amounts of money in building factories here in the United States" without any guarantee of sustained demand for higher-priced goods, he was describing the impossible position facing small manufacturers and traders throughout the Southwest.
His Vancouver experience provided particularly poignant evidence of America's self-inflicted reputational wounds. Despite a weakened dollar making American destinations cheaper for Canadian tourists, "people aren't doing it because they just hate the politics of the way we're negotiating trade deals... And people don't like it. And I don't blame them."
When Canadians—CANADIANS!—are boycotting American destinations because our politics are too toxic, you know we've achieved peak international pariah status.
Dr. Gabriel Trujillo: Education Under Federal Assault
TUSD Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo delivered the most devastating segment, methodically documenting how federal funding freezes are already destroying educational opportunities for Tucson's most vulnerable students. As the leader of Arizona's second-largest school district, Trujillo has become an unlikely warrior in the battle to preserve public education against systematic conservative demolition.
"It's gone. It is gone," Trujillo stated with clinical precision when asked about $6 million in federal education funding. "The Trump administration has issued a directive to halt any payments in these grants to school districts for the 25-26 school year so that the administration can conduct a quote-unquote review."
Because nothing says "government efficiency" like conducting a "review" of programs that have been successfully educating children for decades.
This isn't bureaucratic abstraction—it's educational devastation with immediate human consequences. "It is going to eliminate after-school programs that are focused on math and reading, writing, and language arts... It's gone in 24 schools, and it's going to be gone as of October 1st. Thousands of students take advantage of 24 schools."
For working families, particularly in Indigenous and Chicano communities where parents often work multiple jobs or non-traditional hours, these after-school programs provide essential dual services. As Trujillo explained: "Not only is it an academic intervention, it's also childcare. So our parents rely on it, not just for the academic portion of it, but also as a place for their kids to stay until they get out of work."
The superintendent's analysis cuts through conservative rhetoric to reveal the systematic nature of this assault: "Now knowing that this administration is doing exactly what it said it was going to do, which is definitely what I've been afraid of. These are not political talking points anymore coming out of the U.S. Department of Ed or the Trump administration. It is a full-fledged assault on traditional public schools as we know them."
This represents a deliberate strategy to defund public education, leading to dysfunction, and then use that dysfunction as justification for privatization. It's the classic conservative playbook: break government services, then claim the government doesn't work. For communities of color, who rely disproportionately on public institutions, this approach represents nothing less than educational ethnic cleansing.
The human impact extends beyond immediate service cuts. TUSD will lose "about 40 positions" and face massive reductions in "professional development for teachers, support for English language learners, students struggling to come to proficiency in English... student support services with social workers and behavior specialists."
Because apparently the solution to America's educational challenges is firing the very people who help students learn English and access mental health support—nothing says "America First" like sabotaging American children's futures.
Trujillo's security upgrades, while necessary, reveal the dystopian reality of American schooling. The district is implementing "badge-based security notification systems" and "a Plexiglas bullet-resistant product that will definitely fortify our public-facing windows and our classroom windows."
As he grimly noted: "I would rather take the criticism that you guys are making the schools look... too hardened... than the other in the event of a fatality."
The Cascade of Consequences: How This Affects You
These policy decisions create cascading consequences that ripple through communities like dropping stones in still water. When federal education funding disappears, local taxpayers face impossible choices: accept degraded schools or approve tax increases to restore federal services. It's a shell game where children always lose and communities get blamed for Washington's fiscal failures.
For Indigenous families whose children are already underserved by educational systems designed around European-American cultural norms, losing specialized support services represents educational abandonment. For Chicano students whose families depend on English language learning programs, federal cuts literally steal linguistic access to American opportunity.
The broader economic uncertainty that all three guests described—deficit spending, trade war threats, and damage to international reputation—creates a climate where investment in community development becomes nearly impossible.
How do you plan economic development when tariff policy changes with presidential tweets? How do you attract international investment when global neighbors actively avoid American destinations?
Questions for Reflection
As we process this economic and educational reality, several questions demand our urgent consideration:
How long can a democracy survive when fiscal policy systematically rewards wealth while defunding the institutions that create educated citizens capable of democratic participation?
What happens to American competitiveness when our international reputation becomes so toxic that even our closest neighbors prefer vacationing elsewhere while simultaneously decimating the educational infrastructure that produces innovative workers?
¡Órale! A Call for Progressive Possibility
Despite the depressing documentation of deficit delusion and educational erosion, hope persists in the voices of truth-tellers like Hoffman, Fishman, and Trujillo. Their willingness to speak mathematical facts to political power, to call out conservative contradictions with numerical precision, and to fight for evidence-based policy provides a roadmap for resistance and renewal.
The path forward requires recognizing that true fiscal responsibility means investing in education, infrastructure, and institutions that build broadly shared prosperity. It means choosing cooperation over confrontation, evidence over ideology, and long-term community building over short-term political theater.
As Indigenous and Chicano communities have always known, survival requires collective action, mutual aid, and fierce protection of our children's futures. The same organizing strategies that have preserved our cultures through centuries of systematic oppression have now become essential tools for preserving public education and economic justice.
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What Do You Think?
The conversation continues, and your voice matters in shaping our collective response to these challenges. Leave a comment below and help us explore these critical questions:
What strategies can communities use to protect public education when federal support disappears? How do we build economic resilience when national policies create international isolation?
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Trump policies are almost all odious, and his assault on public education is particularly criminal.