Trump Order Aims to Abolish Education Department - The Thursday AM Quickie 3/6/25
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Today you'll read about how workers at one federal agency literally stood up to Elon Musk's DOGE hatchet squad, what Democrats and Republicans are saying about Texas Rep. Al Green's act of defiance during Donald Trump's big speech, and the latest challenges to Palestinian rights activism on college campuses across the US.
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THE BIG NEWS
Trump Hopes to Kill Public Education With the Stroke of a Pen
America had a good run as the home of the world's premiere university system and a flawed but vital system of primary and secondary schools open to the children of all, regardless of race, religion, or income. But all that will come to an end if Donald Trump gets his way. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post report that Trump will sign an executive order as early as today to abolish the Department of Education.
Per the Post, the draft order "recognizes that the president does not have the power to shutter the Education Department," which would require Congressional action and at least 60 votes in the Senate, while Republicans now hold only 53 seats. Instead, the order calls on unqualified Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure" of department to "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law."
Likely the most immediate outcomes will be "deep cuts" to the department's 4,500-strong workforce, programs, and grants, which include "the $18.4 billion Title I program that provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, as well as the $15.5 billion program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities." Not to mention the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program. Trump claims his order will restore local control over schools, but of course state and local governments are already govern public schools and universities.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, says Trump's plan "sends a message that the president doesn't care about opportunity for all kids. Maybe he cares about it for his own kids or his friends' kids or his donors' kids — but not all kids."
The secular US educational system is powered by public investment and union labor, and that's why Republicans have for decades been determined to destroy it. Those plans gained steam with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Now Trump is preparing to deliver on that extremist right-wing vision, which will wipe out economic opportunity for millions of Americans while depriving them of a core human right. This order is a recipe for resegregation and generational poverty that will diminish the global standing of the US by gutting scientific research, cultural industries, technological development, and blue- and white-collar jobs alike.
There's another reason the Republicans want to make sure the public wallows in ignorance, deprived of knowledge and therefore power: "We won with poorly educated," as Trump famously bragged during the 2016 GOP primaries. "I love the poorly educated."