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”.
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