“Today the Department of Education oversees a budget of $268 billion. Its role, according to the DOE itself, is to “establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education.”
That assistance takes two forms. The first is loans and grants. A full 60% of the Education Department’s 2024 budget (or $160 billion) went to the Office of Federal Student Aid, which administers Pell Grants, federal direct subsidized loans, federal direct unsubsidized loans and the federal work-study program. Pell Grants help roughly one-third of U.S. undergraduates — all from lower-income families — pay for college, with an average award of about $4,500. At the same time, more than half of undergraduates in the United States receive federal loans to make college more affordable.
The second form of DOE assistance is spending on public elementary and secondary education. The largest federal fund for K-12 schools is Title I, which supplements state and local funding for low-achieving children, especially in poor areas ($18.4 billion in 2023). The next largest is the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which helps schools cover special-education costs ($14.2 billion in 2023). Through these programs and others like them — Title IX, Title VI, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — the Department of Education holds schools accountable for complying with federal nondiscrimination laws.”
…
“The department was established by an act of Congress, meaning that Congress would need to pass another law to abolish it. Trump cannot just dissolve a cabinet-level agency with the stroke of his pen — and he’s extremely unlikely to find 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to eliminate the department either. Even if every Republican senator voted yes — a big if — Trump would still fall seven votes short.
At her confirmation hearing last month, McMahon admitted as much.
“Yes or no: Do you agree that since the department was created by Congress, it would need an act of Congress to actually close the Department of Education?” asked Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
“President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress,” McMahon replied. “We’d like to do this right.”
The longer answer, however, is that the Trump White House can do a lot to alter the Department of Education without congressional approval. Already, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful, firing or suspending scores of employees while gutting the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on America’s academic progress.”
“The Trump administration on Wednesday moved to drop an Idaho emergency abortion case in one of its first moves on the issue since President Donald Trump began his second term.
The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was originally filed by the Biden administration, and allow Idaho to fully enforce its strict abortion ban even during emergency situations.”
“The Trump administration’s massive federal cuts and swelling feelings of economic uncertainty helped fuel a recession-level spike in layoff plans last month, new data showed Thursday.
US-based employers last month announced plans to slash 172,017 jobs, a 103% increase from a year ago and the highest February total since 2009”
Trump paused tariffs on automobiles because big auto companies called him and convinced him to pause them. What about all those companies and consumers who do not have Trump’s ear?
“France supported the fledgling continental army for about four years with supplies, weapons, advisors, men; you know, [the army got many of its words from the French]. Yeah, I don’t recall France ever telling the U.S. they should just surrender to England. You don’t bend the knee to Communists and dictators…you punch them in the face until they stop. If we bend the knee to Russia now, how long will it be until we beg the dragon that rises in the East to please eat us last?”
Russian victory is not inevitable. Russian territorial progress has been slow, by May 9th Russian will have lost a million soldiers killed or wounded, Russia has about a year’s worth of armored vehicles left, Russian logistics is using: civilian vans, golf buggies, and donkeys, and the Russian economy is making huge sacrifices to support the wartime economy.
“The 43 days of his second term have revealed a president in the grip of a set of large ideas that were an occasional but far from a paramount feature of his first term. This version of Trump is more serious — determined to dismember large parts of the federal government and upend relations between the United States and the rest of the world on trade and security. He is ready to pursue these ideas in a sustained and pitiless way, all the while asserting vast new powers for himself as president.”