LOS ANGELES (OC).–President Donald Trump, 79, delivered on another campaign promisee to dismantle the Department of Education with the Supreme Court ruling today that the executive branch can determine federal employment. Democrats led by teachers unions around the country fought Trump’s intent to dismantle the Department of Education, claiming it would cause irreparable harm to the nation’s public school children. Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon said the department would be reducted in size from 4,133 workers 2,183 workers. Whatever functions were retrenched, they would be transferred to the Small Business Administration and Department of Health and Human Services. Trump’s March 20 executive order sent shock waves through the education community, knowing that he intended to dismantle the department, a promise once made by President Ronald Reagan.
States attorney generals claim that dismantling the Education Department makes impossible certifying government loans and Pell grants to colleges and universities for students qualifying for federal aid. States claim that cutting the Education Department workforce makes impossible using the data necessary to allocate billions of federal dollars to the states. Whatever arguments made to the Supreme Court, they agreed with the Article 2 authority to regulate the size of federal agencies. “It will be effectively impossible to undo much of the damage caused,” said Skye Peryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, promising she would “aggressively pursue every legal option as this case proceeds to ensure that all children in this country have access to public education they deserve. With the Supreme Court ruling in Trump’s favor, legal options have ended.
Trump’s solicitor general John Sauer told the Supreme Court that all of the Education Department’s functions could be handled with its reduced down staff. “The Department of Education has determined that it can carry out its statutorily mandated functions with a pared down staff and that many discretionary functions are better left to the States,” Sauer said. Education advocacy groups the National Education Assn. said reducing the department’s staff would have catastrophic damage to public schools, universities and colleges. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Supreme Court circumvented the Article 1 authority of Congress to repeal laws “by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve,” Sotomayor wrote. “But either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is great.”
All three liberal justices, Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Kenji Brown Jackson, saw the ruling as an attack on separation of powers. Since Congress created the Department of Education in 1979, the liberal justices said it was up to an act of Congress to change personnel staffing at the Education Department. “Today the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious, the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” said Education Secretary Lina McMahon. McMahon agrees with Trump that the Education Department performed many duplicative functions and must be reduced consistent with Trump’s executive order to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, rooting out waste, fraud and mismanagement.
McMahon said she would continue education related functions “empowering families and teachers by reducing the educations bureaucracy. Driving Trump to dismantle the Education Department were radical reforms during the Obama and Biden administrations where they implement anti-racist and white privilege training, essentially blaming white people for racism requiring federal education policies to reverse white privilege in public education. Once the Education Department let activists push for anti-racist training, it then led to the LGBQT plus training, promoting training, books and policies that indoctrinated school children to adopt new approaches to the LGBTQ-plus population. By the time Trump came to office, dismantling the Department of Education was a top priority. Trump has the Supreme Court majority agreeing with him.
Democrats and the fake new pushed hard to protect the Department of Education, largely because it carried propaganda clout in push for anti-racism and pro-LGBTQ plus policies, something the federal government should have avoided. Once the Department of Education used its platform to push an anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ-plus agenda it created a backlash in conservative groups believing it had overstepped its boundaries. Once Trump issued his executive order to end the Department of Education March 20, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers began advocating to preserve the Education Department. Once the Department of Education move away from STEM [Science, technology engineering and math] to anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ-plus advocacy conservatives gave up on the Department of Education.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.S
