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”.
They are turning America into what they turned the Middle East into, a nation run by zealous Christian oligarchs, where women have no rights and where the most important thing above even education and justice is your faith.
Bruh, how did you get a photograph of me?
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.
Many of us are calling and writing our Senators
I don’t mean to be rude, but 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. Each 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.
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…
That’s not how autocracy works, my friend.
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.
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.
I’m not complaining to the dictator. I’m complaining to the people that have the ability to check his power from Congress.
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.
The ones that affect you directly hit the hardest.
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.
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
It’s really no different here, i experienced it first hand as a kid moving between states. My gifted classes in a North Carolina elementary school were equivalent to several grade levels lower in Florida. The Dept. of Education is mostly about setting minimum standards, ensuring equal access, making sure children aren’t discriminated against, and other regulations.
As a teacher and parent with special-needs children, I am absolutely devastated. It’s not a surprise from the party of family values, though. You can feel the disdain from conservative parents, and even from some of the students.
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.
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.
They’re gonna do what they did with BMI, basically make an F a passing grade.
I don’t really hold a lot of innate respect for the founding fathers of this country. I mean some of them individually of course but as a whole I don’t think they were special or more enlightened than other people. However even I have to wonder what it would be like to go back to the past and show them this. Just see how they would react. Surely even a bunch of rich white land owning men would see problems with this right?
I like to think they would. Not because they were anti capitalist but because the wealthy have become their own kind of nolble class and the founding fathers hated the nobility. They were capitalists that designed a system that was intended to give the greatest number of people an even opertunity to pursue capital. They didn’t consider the idea of economic capture of government. I can’t blame them. It’s a pretty modern idea. alien idea for their time. Even if they had, it’s late stage capitalism. It doesn’t play by the rules. Also, respect for Thomas Paine.
