WASHINGTON—The administration, in its drive for total power, is determined to plunge the nation into even deeper constitutional crisis as Vice President Vance all but said directly by tweet last night that Trump intends to ignore court orders designed to curb some of his unconstitutional power grabs.
The vice president, who has surfaced since he took office three weeks ago only to endorse whatever Trump does did so last night to signal that nothing, not even direct court orders, will restrain the administration from doing as it pleases.
Among the court orders issued to curb the president’s power grab thus far are ones that temporarily halt his declaration of an end to birthright citizenship, his freezing of trillions of dollars in funding to programs started by Congress and programs that only Congress can limit and a court order that limits some of the Trump attacks on transgender rights.
On immigrant rights alone there are at least 10 lawsuits filed against what the president is doing.
In keeping with the unconstitutional power grabs by Republican President Donald Trump and his handler, mega-billionaire Elon Musk, they are escalating their war against the nation’s public schools, their students, their teachers, and the federal Education Department.
And it’s no coincidence those institutions and people are linked, as they represent people the two oligarchs hate: Students of color, public workers, union members and the government.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports 42% of public school students nationally are white, 30% are Hispanic and 21% are Black. And 70% of U.S. teachers and school staff are unionized.
The war accelerated on February 7 when Musk sent his “Department of Government Efficiency” 22-year-old tech people into the Education Department headquarters in downtown D.C. to once again sweep and raid its files, seeking personal data and more.
And the Senate’s ruling Republicans opened a second front in the war on the same day when their budget blueprint for the fiscal year starting October 1, released the same day, also axes federal education money, says Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, which actually is supposed to help disburse the funds.
“Republicans’ budget blueprint shows they are serious about eliminating the Department of Ed, cutting Medicaid and Medicare, and increasing wait times for veterans by slashing the VA. They are blindly following Elon Musk’s lead rather than the American people’s needs,” she tweeted.
Meanwhile, when a group of members of Congress, hearing of the DOGE raid, rushed down Capitol Hill to the department’s front door to conduct oversight and discover what was going on, they were met by a stone-faced security guard who didn’t identify himself or his police force and physically barred them from entering. The cop admitted he was getting paid with taxpayer money, but that was all, angering the lawmakers.
“They are blocking members of Congress from entering the Department of Education! Elon is allowed in and not the people? ILLEGAL,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., the youngest member of Congress and a recent college grad, posted on twitter/X, which Musk owns. Frost posted video of the confrontation.
“They’ve called armed federal officers to the scene. We aren’t dangerous. We are here to represent our people. To defend public education. This is an authoritarian regime. You cannot block members of Congress from entering the Department of Education,” Frost said. Added Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., “Billionaires can go in this building but not representatives.”
The fight in D.C., and the DOGE raid, occurred less than a week before Senate committee confirmation hearings for Linda McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, Republican big giver and Small Business Administration chief during Trump’s first term. McMahon will be the sole witness at the February 13 session.
Now she’s Trump’s nominee to become Education Secretary, armed with his mandate, uttered both during last year’s campaign and after his election in November, to close the department down.
“I want Linda to put herself out of a job,” Trump told an early-February press conference. During the campaign, he alleged, without proof, the department “has been infiltrated by radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
Trump isn’t the only attacker against the nation’s schools. The Republican-run House Education and the Workforce Committee held a February 5 hearing on “The state of American education” without even bothering to hear from students, teachers or their unions.
“In too many places, education in core subjects like math and reading is being replaced by indoctrination. That must change,” said panel chair Tim Walberg, R-Mich. “I’m pleased to see the Trump administration is taking excellent steps to restore common sense, personal responsibility, and parental choice to our education system. But this is just the beginning.”
“Parental choice” is right-wing code words for charter schools and vouchers, both of which harm public schools and promote discrimination. Two-thirds of charter school students are non-Hispanic whites.
And similar zealotry and hate is fomenting, again, in red states, notably Texas and Florida. In Texas, right-wing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who has already forcibly seized control of Houston’s schools—one of the largest school systems in the U.S.—cheered Trump’s moves.
Right-wing Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis anticipated Trump, colluding with the heavily gerrymandered Republican legislature in prior years to strip teachers of tenure, put the state university system under his appointed board’s thumb, and restrict unionization. Texas bans bargaining. Unions there can only “meet and confer” with school boards, superintendents and the Texas Education Agency.
The nation’s teachers unions are already fighting back, even before Trump issues a planned executive order to kill the department—something only Congress can legally do—or dismantle it, piece by piece.
One piece has already been axed: The department’s diversity, equity and inclusion office, with its 50-some workers put on “paid administrative leave” and told the equivalent of “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” for coming back to work—in other jobs.
“It appears Musk has hacked into millions of Americans’ personal information and now has access to their taxes, Social Security, student debt and financial aid filings,” warns Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher with a law degree.
“What are the guardrails to stop this unlawful invasion of privacy?” she asked. “No one gave the U.S. government permission to weaponize confidential financial and personal information against American citizens. And certainly no one gave Elon Musk the right to steal private data—presumably to assist in cutting taxes for himself and other billionaires.
“Musk is an unelected and unaccountable oligarch. His so-called Department of Government Efficiency was not created by Congress. And voters certainly did not elect Trump to hijack their financial information and hand it over to billionaires like Musk.”
“Congress created the Department of Education, and only Congress has the power to end it. And the vast majority of Congress, including 60 House Republicans, rejected gutting public education last session, knowing it would only hurt students and is deeply unpopular with parents and educators,” said National Education Association President Becky Pringle, a Philadelphia science teacher who heads the nation’s largest union.
“Most of us believe every student deserves opportunity, resources, and support to reach their full potential no matter where they live, the color of their skin, or how much their family earns.
“Students across the country benefit from programs run by the Department of Education, especially lower-income students in rural, suburban, and urban communities, students who qualify for federal grants or loans to receive career training or attend 2- and 4-year colleges, and students with disabilities.
“If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights.
“Americans did not vote for, and do not support, ending the federal government’s commitment to ensuring equal educational opportunities for every child.”
Congress, or at least its Republican majorities, aren’t listening to the parents, teachers, students or school workers, hearings the week before show. Neither is Musk. At least, in his Twitter/X posting, he provided some history: The Republican right has been trying to shut the Education Department ever since Congress, agreeing with the late Democratic President Jimmy Carter, created it.
In 1980, Republican nominee Ronald “Reagan campaigned on ending the federal Dept of Education, which was created by Carter in 1979, but it was bigger when Reagan left office than when he started!” Musk tweeted. “Not this time. President @realDonaldTrump will succeed.”
Even before Musk sent his DOGE devastators into the Education Department offices, Trump had issued an executive order telling the agency to divert money from public schools to vouchers to parents of private school kids. There are few if any safeguards on private schools discriminating against students of color and teachers who disagree with the schools’ dogma.
“The intent is clear: Starve our public schools of the resources our students need and funnel these resources to discriminatory and unaccountable private schools or tax cuts for billionaires who funded his campaign,” Pringle said of Trump.
And that’s not all.
To help “pay for” extending the Trump-GOP tax cut for corporations and the rich, which expires at the end of this year, the House Republicans are going after higher ed, too: Taxing college scholarships and graduate fellowships as income, huge taxes on university endowments, and massive cuts in federal college and university student aid, and making it tougher—not easier—to pay off past student loans–the Associated Press reported.
The richest colleges and universities now pay a 1.4% tax on their endowment income. The endowment income is used to subsidize college tuition and fees. That tax hits the 58 top institutions—think Harvard—and raised $244 million last year. The Republicans want to expand the tax to 14% and have it hit more institutions.
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