Posturing buffoon

Trump wants to destroy the Department of Education. Can he actually do that?

Technically, yes.

However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.”

That’s not such an easy prospect, even though the Republicans look set to take narrow control of the Senate and the House. That’s because abolishing the department “would require 60 votes unless the Republicans abolish the filibuster,” Jal Mehta, professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Vox.

So probably not. If it gets to the point that Trump’s whims of all sorts can be implemented, we’ll be so screwed that we’ll be praying for the Canadians to invade. If he did manage to get his wish, I don’t think he’s aware of the consequences.

Closing the department “would wreak havoc across the country,” Valant said. “It would cause terrible pain. It would cause terrible pain in parts of the country represented by congressional Republicans too.”

Much of that pain would likely fall on the country’s most vulnerable students: poor students, students in rural areas, and students with disabilities. That’s because the department’s civil rights powers help it to support state education systems in providing specialized resources to those students.

As usual, the Republican electorate was too stupid to realize that they were hurting themselves. Or maybe they think it was worth it to hurt their citizens who are handicapped, or gay, or trans, because while it is taking money away from them, it’s taking that money specifically from people they hate.

Even if the DOE isn’t abolished, they can worm their way into it and wreck all kinds of policies. For instance…

Trump officials could also attempt changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too “woke.”

I’m at a university that I would generally class as “woke,” and that’s a good thing. I have so many students who I wouldn’t get to know if we were anti-woke, which generally involves only supporting straight white Christian men.