“The Education Department will begin cutting more than 1,300 people from its workforce and terminating some of its office leases across the country this week, as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to cull the size of the U.S. government’s smallest Cabinet agency.
An agency official told reporters Tuesday that the job cuts being finalized over the coming weeks are expected to affect roughly half of the agency’s workforce.”
“Trump’s anti-DEI orders have—mostly—stuck to signaling that the Education Department would enforce existing civil rights laws and Supreme Court precedents banning racial discrimination. But Martin’s attempt to go after a private religious institution on such vague grounds indicates the Trump administration will attempt to censor speech they perceive as left-wing or “woke,” rather than simply attacking illegal discrimination.”
“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.”
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“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.”
“Physicians elsewhere do not bear the same financial burden. I traveled in 2019 to the Netherlands, Australia, and Taiwan, which have three distinct health care systems that still manage to cover all of their citizens: universal private insurance, a public-private hybrid, and single payer, respectively.
In the Netherlands, physicians take three years of undergraduate studies, three years of master’s studies, and complete a one- to two-year internship before being licensed; certain specialties then require further training. Dutch university students typically graduate with much less debt (less than 25,000 euros on average, or about $26,200) than their American counterparts. In Australia, the training requirements would look familiar to US doctors — a decade or so of education and then on-the-job training — but the tuition would not, with annual medical school costs capped at less than $10,000 per year. Taiwanese doctors likewise spend significantly less money on their education, even relative to differences in cost of living, than US doctors.
What all of those countries have in common is more robust public support for higher education and generous loan repayment programs. The high cost of college is a longstanding issue in the US, and that contributes to the prohibitive cost of a medical education for reasons that have little to do with health care itself.”
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“There is another way in which the US health system places an unusual burden on doctors: the headaches of health insurance paperwork. As left-leaning policy analyst Matt Bruenig wrote on the recent brouhaha over insurers and doctors after the killing of Brian Thompson, at least some of the excess pricing of US medical services can be attributed to the administrative costs that providers incur while dealing with private insurers.
The demands of insurance claims on doctors’ time and attention not only make for a less pleasant working experience, they also take them away from patients, which can contribute to worse health outcomes.
Here is perhaps the most telling statistic, from the Commonwealth Fund’s 2024 international survey of doctors: 20 percent of US doctors said they spend “a lot” of time on paperwork or disputes over medical bills. That was nearly double the rate in the country with the next highest share; 12 percent of Swiss doctors said the same working in their country’s system, which also relies on private insurers to oversee benefits.
Only 5 percent of Dutch doctors and 9 percent of Australian doctors said paperwork and billing took up a large chunk of their time.
This wasteful activity affects both the cost and quality of our health system. Among wealthy countries, US patients have the fewest number of consultations with a doctor in a given year, with the exception of Sweden, and spend the least time with their physicians. Time and money spent on administrative work, for both insurers and providers, account for about 30 percent of the excess medical spending in the United States.”
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“The average physician salary in the US ranges from about $260,000 (for endocrinologists and pediatricians) to $550,000 (for certain surgeons). The most elite providers earn more than $1 million annually.
Dutch general practitioners, by contrast, make about 120,000 euros ($126,000). Even senior hospital surgeons typically earn about 250,000 euros. Australia, with a more robust private market, can be more generous: While primary care doctors earn between AUD$100,000 and $150,000 ($60,000 to $93,000) on average, senior practitioners make more and specialized surgeons can rake in as much as AUD$750,000 ($460,000) — much closer to the American norms.
Doctors in Taiwan — where, it should be noted, nationwide average incomes are about half of what you find in the United States — can make between $60,000 and $100,000 per year. The policy experts I spoke to there agreed that doctors are underpaid relative to the high number of patients they see, substantially more than a typical American physician will see in a day.
Whatever complaints American physicians may have, doctors in those countries feel undercompensated.”
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“The blame game between insurers and doctors is ultimately a distraction. Other countries have private health plans and private providers and yet don’t experience nearly the same waste and out-of-control price increases as the US has. The whole system — the prices and how they’re paid — will need to be addressed in the long run. As one landmark health economics paper put it 20 years ago: “It’s the prices, stupid.””
“In August 2022, Biden announced a blanket forgiveness of up to $20,000 in federal student loans for single borrowers earning less than $125,000 or couples earning less than $250,000. This plan—estimated to cost over $500 billion—was swiftly blocked in federal court, and the Supreme Court later struck it down as an unconstitutional exercise of the spending power.
While Biden couldn’t quite bring home the grand prize, he managed to cancel billions in student loans through now-blocked changes to the federal student loan program. Unsurprisingly, these changes also led to a big increase in the estimated 2024 federal deficit—a $145 billion hike.
The seminal achievement of Biden’s student loan overhaul was the introduction of the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, an income-driven repayment plan that dramatically reduces most borrowers’ monthly payments. Under the previous version of the program, borrowers were directed to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income (calculated as earnings above 150 percent of the federal poverty rate) for 20 years before receiving forgiveness. Borrowers will now pay just 5 percent of their discretionary income (now estimated as earnings more than 225 percent of the federal poverty level), with some receiving forgiveness after only 10 years. While the program was estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $500 billion over the next decade, federal courts fully blocked the program by July 2024.
If somehow allowed to go forward, the SAVE plan would be likely to incentivize students to take on much larger student loan balances, because the program requires borrowers to pay so little back before forgiveness. Ultimately, it’s difficult to see how this extra spending doesn’t encourage colleges to hike tuition.”
“Trump could strip away civil rights and nondiscrimination protections enumerated under the Biden administration, which specifically apply to trans students.
The executive branch has a lot of control over what counts as discrimination in education, thanks to Title IX, a civil rights law originally meant to advance women’s equality. The Biden administration took the position that the law’s protections against discrimination “on the basis of sex” mean that discrimination against trans students on the basis of their trans identity qualifies as sex discrimination.
That interpretation of the law faced legal challenges and has been rejected by about half of the states. The Trump administration can — and likely will — simply take the stance that Title IX offers no protections to trans students.”
“In 2023, over strong objections of activists on the right and left, the Biden administration announced a proposed change to Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in any federally funded educational program. Their suggested change would prohibit outright bans on transgender athletes, but would permit schools to restrict transgender students from participating if they could demonstrate that inclusion would harm “educational objectives” like fair competition and the prevention of injury.
This more nuanced stance marked the first time the Biden administration took the position that sex differences can matter in school sports, something hotly disputed by leading LGBTQ rights organizations. The proposed rule also reflected research that suggests sex differences emerge over time, so the standard for inclusion in high school should not necessarily be the same as that in younger grades.
Contrary to the post-election grumblings from Biden allies in the Atlantic, the president has been virtually silent on his own administration’s proposal for the last 18 months. He’s never spoken about it, and it was never mentioned by any other Biden official, including in any White House briefing on transgender issues.
The White House declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson for the Department of Education said their rulemaking process is still ongoing, as they consider the 150,000 public comments they received. “We do not have information to share today on a timeline,” they added.”
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“Tellingly, Biden’s proposed policy on transgender athletes — allowing targeted restrictions for fairness and safety while rejecting blanket bans — would likely resonate more with average Americans than the hardline stances typically associated with Republicans, who leaned on transgender fearmongering in the midterms only to see their candidates flop, or Democrats, who many voters perceive as having no nuance on the topic at all. Yet the Biden administration’s reluctance to clearly communicate their middle-ground position left a vacuum that Republicans were happy to fill. It’s a dynamic that political observers say has become increasingly common: Democratic leaders stake out a position but, wary of internal rifts, default to strategic ambiguity even on issues where their stances might resonate with voters.”
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“the Biden administration initially staked out a position that said there’s no legitimate basis to discriminate based on sex differences. In 2021, Biden’s Justice Department intervened in a lawsuit filed by parents of an 11-year-old transgender girl against the state of West Virginia, affirming this view.
“[West Virginia] cannot point to any valid evidence that allowing transgender girls to participate on girls’ sports teams endangers girls’ athletic opportunities,” the department said in its filing. “Instead, the State legislated based on misconceptions and overbroad assumptions about transgender girls.”
While praised by major LGBTQ groups like the Human Rights Campaign, this position obscured quieter disagreement among transgender leaders. Some questioned whether sports participation should be a top priority for the movement, while others doubted whether litigation was the best approach for advancing inclusion, given the state of public opinion. The Justice Department’s position also masked divides within the Democratic Party. Though it’s a complex topic and more research is needed, some existing scientific evidence suggests that transgender girls and women who do not suppress testosterone can have advantages in sports, particularly if they have gone through male puberty.
The West Virginia lawsuit wasn’t the only federal suit in the works. Happening at the same time was another case involving two transgender girls that was quickly drawing national attention. In response to Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood winning multiple state track titles in Connecticut, competitors’ parents and the Christian right-wing legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against Connecticut’s policy of including transgender athletes. Though initially dismissed in 2021, a federal judge just this month said the Title IX case could proceed.
As more of these politically charged lawsuits and bills mounted, the Biden administration announced it would be delaying its proposed changes to Title IX, despite its Day 1 executive order. Sources involved said the delay was largely understood as a political move driven by the upcoming midterm elections. When the Education Department finally released its proposed school sports rule in 2023, its language represented more of a compromise.
The rule marked the Biden administration’s first time saying that sex differences can matter in school sports and schools can discriminate in some cases, while also saying schools do not have to — thus permitting blue states like Connecticut to continue with existing policy. While its merits were debated, the federal proposal was on the table.
“The draft regulation recognizes that there are real sex differences and that these matter in competition,” Doriane Coleman, a law professor at Duke University who focuses on sports and gender, told Vox. “For the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which takes the position that all sex differences are just myth and stereotype, that was a big, maybe even treasonous move.””
“Republicans have long dominated Texas politics. They have had a state government trifecta — control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature — since 2003. They currently have a 19-12 majority in the state Senate and an 86-63 majority in the state House. But in recent years, they have repeatedly failed to enact any kind of school choice measure. According to a recent statement by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the state Senate has passed school choice legislation five times since 2015. “It died in a Republican-controlled House each time. That is unacceptable and inexcusable,” Patrick wrote.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott named school choice a top priority in the 2023 legislative session. Both the Senate and House introduced bills that would create education savings accounts for students to use on private school tuition or alternative schooling and other education-related costs. But, at the end of the year, the House voted 84-63 to remove ESAs from House Bill 1 — a massive education bill that also included teacher raises and increased public school funding — bringing Abbott’s yearlong effort to a halt.
Twenty-one Republicans — mostly from rural areas* — joined 63 Democrats in voting to kill ESAs, and Abbott immediately began a full-court press to oust them. By the time the primaries rolled around in March, Abbott had spent $4.4 million to defeat these Republicans and repeatedly visited their districts to endorse their opponents. According to Politico, Texas’s 2024 primaries for state legislature cost a lot more than the typical amount due to the involvement of pro-school-choice donors. In fact, Abbott received more than $6 million from billionaire investor Jeff Yass, a vocal supporter of school choice.
Abbott didn’t campaign against every Republican who voted against the ESAs, but of the 10 that he targeted, seven lost their primaries. Another lost because he was targeted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (for voting in favor of his impeachment) and pro-voucher groups. And one advanced to a May runoff, only to see Abbott endorse his challenger, who eventually won the seat. Another five did not seek reelection. In total, out of the 21 Republican representatives who voted against ESAs in 2023, 14 will not be returning to the legislature next year. And their replacements were all endorsed by Abbott.
Add it all up, and Abbott now appears to have the votes to get ESAs or a similar program through the state House.”