“The Trump administration announced Tuesday it would work to shutter the department by transferring critical responsibilities to other federal agencies. The plan revolves around a series of agreements that spread responsibility for administering tens of billions of dollars in school-related spending across the federal government.”
“While religion is not banned in public schools, the Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that state-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the First Amendment.”
“due to structural changes in our politics, which are largely due to a realignment in our politics based on education levels, even if the Democrats were to have a really great election cycle in the midterms, there’s going to be a limit to how many seats they can win back due to these structural changes.
If you look at Trump’s job approval on issues, he’s underwater on everything, particularly way, way lower now on the economic ratings, on inflation, and even immigration now is underwater. So you would think that his total job approval, currently around 44 percent, would be lower.
The bottom line is based on historical standards, Trump and the Republicans should be headed to a really bad midterm election. But because of these changes in our politics, due to realignment based on education, they’ll be more insulated than they would have been in the past from a tsunami-type of midterm.”
Trump is destroying the Department of Education and making it so they cannot fulfill their law-mandated duties. The Constitution states that Congress makes the laws, and the executive faithfully executes them. This is not faithfully executing them.
“International students represent 71 percent of the full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences and 73 percent in electrical and computer engineering at U.S. universities. It is already much easier to transition from a student visa to a work visa and then to permanent residence in Canada and other countries than in the United States. International student interest in coming to U.S. universities will plummet without the ability to work in their field after graduation. That will sever America’s talent pipeline.”
“The case against government grocery stores is straightforward. Government providers have no incentive to spend money wisely or respond to customers’ needs. Unlike private businesses, which must compete for customers by offering quality goods at reasonable prices, government entities get paid regardless of performance. Tax dollars flow into the system whether the shelves are stocked or empty, whether the service is stellar or abysmal.”
“A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Education Department to fire almost 40 percent of its workforce four months after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to begin closing down the department.
The justices, by an apparent 6-3 vote announced Monday, lifted an injunction a federal judge in Boston granted in May against the firings. That judge found that the staff cuts were so drastic they would prevent the department from carrying out duties mandated by Congress. He also said the mass firings appeared to be part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department entirely, despite a lack of congressional authorization to do so.
…
The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision, but all three liberal justices joined a 19-page dissent that accused the court’s conservative majority of favoring the Trump administration when considering emergency appeals.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
…
The majority stressed in that decision that the high court was not giving its legal blessing to any specific plan to downsize any particular agency. But now it appears to have done just that with the Education Department.”
A common Republican response to a school shooting is mental health is the problem. A few years ago, members of both parties passed a mental health bill and school therapists were paid for. The Trump administration cut that funding because of a line about diversity hiring; Republicans who voted for this funding are silent.
“According to the materials, Mamdani scored a 2140 out of 2400 on the SAT, placing him in the 89th percentile nationwide. At the time, this was below the median SAT score for admitted students at Columbia and, given the prevailing distribution by race, well below the median SAT score for Asian students, but likely well above the median SAT score for black students—hence, the advantage of marking “black.”
The wrinkle in the story, however, is that, despite having a father on the faculty and marking black on his application, Columbia rejected Mamdani. There are two plausible theories for why this happened. First, in general, Columbia is a highly competitive university with an admissions rate of less than ten percent, which means that candidates around the median will not make the cut.
Second, there is a possibility that Mamdani’s box-checking gambit backfired. The full application includes the name and contact information for his father, Mahmood Mamdani, and his mother, Mira Nair, both of whom are public figures and neither of whom is black. The application also included a flag noting that the elder Mamdani appeared to be “affiliated with Columbia” and another line noting the family’s address in an exclusive Manhattan neighborhood. With even cursory research, an admissions officer could have seen that Mr. Mamdani was neither black, nor underprivileged”