Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that instructs the US education secretary, Linda McMahon, to start dismantling the Department of Education, seemingly attempting to circumvent the need to obtain congressional approval to formally close a federal department.
The administration may eventually pursue an effort to get Congress to shut down the agency, Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, because its budget had more than doubled in size in recent years but national test scores had not improved.
The federal government does not mandate curriculum in schools; that has been the responsibility of state and local governments, which provide 90% of the funding to schools. Nevertheless, at the White House, Trump repeated his campaign promise to “send education back to the states”.
Every Trump announcement or headline no longer means anything to me about this orange beanbag.
Instead, every headline reflects to me just how stupid the American people are. They are literally being fleeced and sodomized by a group of idiots and they just lie there taking it all.
Many of us are calling and writing our Senators and Representatives daily and protesting often. There are protests in NYC almost every day.
They’ll make protesting illegal before it changes their minds. Hope you’re all planning for that.
The Constitution defines power of the President. If Trump disables the Constitution without a 2/3 state ratification, he demotes himself from POTUS to old guy who can’t take a punch.
Laws are only as good as their enforcement mechanisms. And if there are no enforcement mechanisms… well…
Many of us are calling and writing our Senators
This is part of the ignorance. They’ve given you ample proof that they don’t and will never give a shit.
All these people understand is money and violence. Do you have as much money as the people paying for both Dems and Republicans?
So it’s ignorant to use the avenues of influence at my disposal? It’s only ignorant if I expect results. It’s more ignorant to expect them to know what their constituents want without informing them.
What do you propose we do instead?
It absolutely is if you’re constantly taking an hour of your day writing or on hold to speak to a guy who has historically never done anything you’ve asked them to (but blames it on a dude he works with, both of whom get elected on the dime of the same guy).
Take that time to join a worker’s organization, or organizing to unionize your workplace, or engaging in mutual aid, or anything that isn’t talking to the guy whose job is making sure workers think they have any influence over him instead of the people paying him, who always get whatever bills they want passed. The data is loud and clear.
I’m currently disabled, but I can get out for a few hours at a time. I use that to protest. Daily messaging takes ~5 minutes. The call takes 15-20 minutes including wait time. I’m all ears if you have any other suggestions.
I didn’t say the protests were a waste of time, writing to congress is. Worker’s organizations include a lot of disabled people and they actually do care, unlike democrats. Membership in a third party (that can also use all the help they can get and are actually engaging in mutual aid and not just profiteering) is the only way voting can get you anything from Dems, because as long as you vote for them they have all they want from you.
I’m still in support of replacing deadwood centrist Democrats with progressives. I personally believe we have a better chance in raising the primary and midterm voter turnout up from its current 20%, than to rally a state as big as NY behind a third-party in 18 months.
No, I also don’t have as much violence as they do either.
Yeah, so many dictators abdicated because they realized their people didn’t like them. It really hurt their feelings.
You can’t complain a dictator out of power.
Every now and then I write Ted Cruz a letter. Sometimes he sends me back a bullshit letter about something entirely different. At least he responds sometimes though unlike the other fuck head.
No, the majority of them don’t lie there and take it, they are cheering and shouting “More! More!”
This is ridiculous and untrue. There are a lot of crazy shitheads in our country, but they definitely are not the majority.
Well boys see you on the front lines when we get shipped to Canada.
They wouldn’t dare. If they drafted kids to fight fucking Canada there would be more defections than Canadian casualties.
As if newer American generations didn’t already have enough reasons to refrain from starting families and having children. I’m sure this is going to turn that trend right around.
This sounds like some horrendous Taliban level shit but living in a federal system myself (Australia), k-12 education is primarily a state responsibility here as I believe it is in the US. I wouldn’t want to see this happen in my own country but it wouldn’t be the same as closing down the department of education in an unfederated country like New Zealand or most European nations where it would be disastrous.
Inconsistencies between states here (Australia) used to negatively impact students moving between states and entering tertiary education. Federal systems can be grossly inmeficient and full of duplication and barriers between states.
Unfortunately not having national standards is probably going to increase economic disadvantage in already disadvantaged red states which will only increase division in the US.
K-12 schools here are mostly handled by the states just like yours. But what this will mean is that FASFA will go in the near future, don’t believe what the MAGAts will say about it being left alone because it will not last. They will likely try to kill it quickly in a few weeks or a few months if we are lucky. Without FASFA hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of current and future college students will not be able to afford to attend college and university. Private students loans are hyper predatory and not an option for the vast majority of students.
I wasn’t aware of FASFA. I just looked at the distribution of funds by state and it looks like this is an overwhelming loss for red states, far worse than I expected.
I know the US is fucking weird politically and culturally but anywhere else I would say if MAGA don’t accelerate the transition from populism to authoritarianism they are leaving the door open to an alternative populist movement to give them a real thrashing in their heartland.
Our system does not allow for the creation of real competing political parties outside of the 2 party system, and the Democrats are a controlled opposition with right of center politics, so this will never happen here
They’re gonna do what they did with BMI, basically make an F a passing grade.
I like how people will say “he can’t do that” but do nothing to prevent it
“911, there’s a murderer in my house!”
“Oh, no worries, he can’t do that. It’s illegal. Take care.”
The “dumb American” stereotype is about to become reality.
