But what’s the point of doing this if they’re going to reassign work and workers to other agencies? It’s not gonna save any money. If they wanted to kill some programs to actually save money, they don’t need to disband the department.
I think the main idea is a shift in focus from being involved with education to just giving money to the states to do their own things for education. Certainly the US’s educational performance has been quite poor(*) since the 1980s when this started:
and lately it’s been a conduit for forcing leftist social goals on the states as a condition for getting the federal money. The Feds only supply about 10% of educational funding, so getting them out of the way seems better than not given their track record.
*= interestingly, part of the US’s poor educational outcomes vs other western developed countries appears less bad if you look at our average scores by race compared to the same race students elsewhere. Get out your magnifying glass for the chart below:
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Reassign the actual tasks being done (that you want to continue) and the employees actually needed to do them, and you’re left with a bloated bureaucracy that literally has nothing to do. That’s your savings. Just hacking away programs will save some money, but still leave most of the fat (and leave the fat with even less to “administer”).
Honestly, I see breaking it up like this, then bringing it back together in a new department completely rebuilt from the ground up with a more limited focus.
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Trump gave several speeches today, so of course lots of proposals and actions that might be reversed later.
- crypto reserve (by not doing anything except hodl’ing the seized crypto from criminals)
- plans to rebuild the strategic oil reserve, but slowly ($20B worth)
- cut off aid to South Africa over their anti-white policies, offering immigration to those harmed
- cut off aid to Columbia university over their pro-Hamas actions, antisemitism
- planning unspecified restrictions on the existing student loan forgiveness program (TBD)
- Capital One getting sued for de-banking some Trump-related conservative org
- peace talks with Russia (over Ukraine)
- peace talks also separately with Iran (over nukes)
- tariff this, tariff that, more delays and uncertainty (nothing new there)
Columbia article:
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”
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USAID getting what they deserve it seems
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5185546-trump-administration-cuts-usaid/
A senior official at USAID instructed the agency’s remaining staff to convene at the agency’s now-former headquarters in Washington on Tuesday for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents stored there, many of which contain sensitive information.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” the email said… The email didn’t provide any reason for the document destruction.
Rubio said there were 5,200 contracts that were canceled that would have spent “tens of billions” of dollars. He described those contracts as not serving the U.S. and, in some cases, harming the country’s national interests.
“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18 percent of programs we are keeping (approximately 1,000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department,” Rubio said.
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LOL
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/13/senate-democrats-vote-funding-bill-elon-musk-00229284
Senate Dems brace to vote for a bill they hate — to block Elon Musk
Democrats appear on the cusp of voting to avoid a shutdown because they fear the consequences of standing up to the Trump administration could be worse.
The announcement late Thursday by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would support the House GOP’s seven-month stopgap measure was an acknowledgment that Democrats have little choice if they want to avoid empowering Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to unilaterally halt more federal programs under the cover of a shutdown.
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Apparently Biden didn’t sign most of his laws or pardons himself according to a signature analysis (nearly all were identical except his mysterious resignation and Kamala endorsement letter after he disappeared for several days).
So now there’s some serious consternation among the Democrat elites and Biden family since Trump said their pardons were invalid since Biden didn’t actually sign them.
Won’t matter much to Hunter who is dodging a lawsuit on vacation in S Africa, with over a dozen secret service members in tow.
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The confrontation between article 2, the president and article 3 the judiciary is building up. Will be interesting to see if Roberts and Scotus step in to try to cool things off.
Article 1 is also stepping in