webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Dept of Education

longtime target of GOP, esp TP as example of gov't intrusion; segregated schools bastion of conservatism

see pjt 2025 DOGE COUP MUSK MCMAHON WWF

see NEUTER AGY CAPT

see public schools

see school bd

see public teacher unions

perry 3 oops?

---

POLLS FAVOR BUT SHUT DOWN xo WRESTLE LADY SMILING 3 25

180K TEACHERS GONE TO POOR RURAL KIDS? TITLE I?

A SCALP? PROOF THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DO ANYTHING?

-=-=

-=-=

an 10 26

Trumpster wants to kill the Ed Department — but not before a $43K office makeover

---

IHE

March 05, 2026

McMahon Touts First Year in Office; Dems and Students Push Back

The Education Department says that in just one year McMahon has secured reforms in higher ed that conservatives have championed for decades. Critics say her work is creating barriers to college access.

By Jessica Blakeand Katherine Knott

A year after Education Secretary Linda McMahon took office, two Democratic lawmakers, a handful of students and several laid-off staff members took to the steps of the Education Department to decry her track record of cuts and crackdowns. Their message was clear—McMahon must go.

“Trump put someone in this position that has absolutely no experience and is completely unqualified to run the Department of Education,” said Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva.

The only way the secretary can make up for her wrongs, Grijalva and her fellow speaker, California representative Mark Takano, added, is by stepping down.

Most Popular

“I’d like her to quit. Resign. Put someone in there that actually knows the job and understands education,” Grijalva said. “There is nothing that she can do other than walk away.”

But the Trump administration and Republicans on the Hill have shown no sign of backing down. In fact, they say things are just getting started.

Over the past year, McMahon has wasted no time in carrying out what she called her “final mission”—ending decades of so-called bureaucratic bloat at the Education Department and ultimately putting herself out of a job.

Within the first 10 days, she fired nearly half of the agency’s employees, setting up a lengthy legal battle that ultimately ended when the Supreme Court gave the green light for the reduction in force. Then she outsourced dozens of programs and relocated many of the staff members that remained, signing nine interagency agreements that parceled operations out to the Departments of Labor, State, Interior and Health and Human Services. She also defunded grant programs that support minority-serving institutions and redirected millions to support the administration’s priorities.

Additionally, McMahon launched a series of high-stakes battles with some of the nation’s wealthiest universities, bringing institutions like Columbia University to heel, vowing to cut off all grant funding for Harvard University and targeting dozens of others through civil rights investigations. More broadly, she also had tough words for higher ed, denouncing the sector as “broken” in a September speech that outlined her vision to improve colleges and universities.

Now, she and her chief higher ed official, Under Secretary Nicholas Kent, are working to carry out a number of monumental policy shifts, including loan caps, expansion of the Pell Grant program and a new earnings test to hold colleges accountable.

The department touted its own accomplishments as McMahon marked her one-year anniversary in the job. Among the highlights included in a fact sheet distributed at the beginning of the Democrats’ news conference were “restoring civil rights, merit and accountability to universities”; “realigning civil rights enforcement with the letter of the law”; and “halting Biden’s attempt to pass debt to every taxpayer and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“In the first year of the Trump administration, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon took significant steps to make college more affordable, increased transparency for students on the value of their education, and restored merit in higher education,” the fact sheet states. “These are reforms that conservatives have championed for decades—and in just one year, we’ve made them a reality.”

‘Year One Was the Tester’

Daniel Collier, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Memphis, is a longtime fan of the WWE, which McMahon helped to turn into a global enterprise, and has followed her since she served in the first Trump administration. He said her background in wrestling and business was clearly reflected during her first year in office.

“She was a very ruthless executive in WWE with her husband … and they basically ruled the wrestling world with an iron fist for a long time,” he said. “She is applying those lessons there in, saying that ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do and you can all deal with it.’”

Editor's Picks

He expects plans to break up ED as well as work on other key priorities across the federal government will further accelerate as the administration prepares for the midterm elections, when Republicans could lose control of Congress.

“Year one was the tester in seeing what they could get away with and how long they could get away with it and who cares about what issues,” he said. “Whatever you saw in year one will be limited in comparison to what we see in year two, because they need to get it done before the House flips. And I have no idea what that looks like.”

Republicans, including Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, who chairs the House education committee, praised McMahon for her work, saying she’s delivered real results.

“She’s helping rightsize the Department of Education, give parents a stronger voice, and hold colleges accountable,” he said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “I’m proud to work alongside her to cut red tape in Washington and make sure our education system works for students, parents, and teachers—not the bureaucracy.”

Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, said when it comes to dismantling ED and working to transform colleges, McMahon “is doing what her boss wants her to do.”

“Secretary McMahon has done about as good a job as I could hope in the things that I would like her to do,” he said. “I think she’s worked hard to try and get them done to the maximum extent allowed by law.”

McCluskey supports her efforts to shrink the federal role in education, though the use of interagency agreements to outsource various programs and responsibilities isn’t moving as quickly as he thought. He expects to see more in the coming year. (He’s less supportive of the administration’s efforts to change what colleges can teach and whom they can hire.)

He attributes the pace to McMahon’s business background, “where you can’t just snap your fingers and everything falls into place. You have to have plans and processes and thoughtfulness, and so to the extent that things are moving in a more deliberative manner, I think that might reflect her management.”

He added that McMahon also avoided any major controversies or gaffes—other than when she referred to artificial intelligence as “A1,” like the sauce.

“Whenever I’ve seen her, she gives the impression that this is somebody who is calm, in charge of her operation and not trying to draw a whole lot of attention to herself,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers stand with students, former department staff members and union representatives for a photo after their news conference.

But students in attendance at Wednesday’s news conference were not so supportive. To them, McMahon represents a threat to their academic aspirations.

Markie Mathis, a sociology major and member of the John Fylpaa Leadership Institute at Long Beach City College, said it’s “crazy” to even think about dismantling the department—let alone actually doing so. And as long as support and funding for higher ed is on the line, many students’ ability to complete a degree will hang in the balance, she added.

“It’s scary,” Mathis said. “If funding gets cut, I probably won’t be able to continue.”

Olivia McCary, a political science major at the same college, said McMahon’s characterization of higher education as nothing more than a career pipeline and the department as unnecessary are disconnected from the needs of students on the ground. To McCary, college is a chance to engage as a citizen and the department is a critical means of civil rights enforcement.

“I’m an African American who is trying to work in legislation one day,” she said. “But a lot of states don’t support people of color or DEI programs. People at the department were the people who backed us up. Now they’re going away.”

---

---

rww

12/19/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference turned into a war between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson on Thursday as the two men spent much of their speeches trading blows.

Hegseth’s crusade against the Chaplain Corps undermines readiness, trust, and pluralism.

Anthony D’Esposito will be expected to investigate ethical lapses, despite his own alleged ethical lapses.

Why Media Matters is naming Nick Fuentes the 2025 Misinformer of the Year.

James Fishback’s campaign may not be flashy but it sure is fashy.

Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discrimination ... don’t matter,” one attorney said.

---

---

AN 12 25

Flag linked to Christian Nationalism and Jan. 6 hung at Education Dept

APPEAL TO HEAVEN

---

rww

10/30/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Duffy has found a way to turn even the most mundane highway procurement matters into an opportunity for pandering to the MAGA base—and getting back on Fox News. His secret sauce? He has been enthusiastically using the agency to spread the Gospel and advance his mission to make America fecund again.

Trump loyalist Steve Bannon is being accused of giving MAGA false hope for 2028.

Trump cannot be president again. But he and his loyal followers have every reason for wanting to make people think he can.

Trump's Department of Education is making workers of LGBTQ+ nonprofits ineligible for student loan forgiveness.

Paul Newby, a born-again Christian, has turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power. Over two decades, he’s driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state.

Why Tucker Carlson platformed white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

---

an 8 25

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon toured two Arkansas schools Tuesday as part of McMahon’s “Returning Education to the States” tour.

They were joined by Arkansas junior U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and state Education Secretary Jacob Oliva on tours of Little Rock’s Don R. Roberts Elementary School and Saline County Career and Technical Campus in Benton.

“I wanted to be in places where I could actually see some of the things that I talked about at work,” McMahon said in Saline County. “Not necessarily everybody has to go to a four-year school. There are places like this that would be sponsored from the tech field, where students can earn dual credits, go right into community college, go right to work in the field. … This is the secret sauce.”

McMahon and Cotton both alluded to the need to rid schools of red tape and bureaucracy. President Donald Trump has said he plans on shuttering the U.S. Department of Education to give states more power over education and wants McMahon to put herself out of her own job — a plan McMahon has supported.

Sanders also touted the expansion of the state’s Educational Freedom Account program to around 50,000 students in Arkansas this year. The program, which is open to all Arkansas students for the first time this fall, provides state funding for allowable education expenses, such as private school tuition.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

While Sanders and McMahon focused on the positive during their two stops, a handful of protestors outside Roberts Elementary held signs criticizing the state’s LEARNS Act and McMahon. The wide-ranging 2023 law made several changes to the state’s K-12 education system, including creating the school voucher program and raising the state’s minimum teacher salary to $50,000

“The parents of [Roberts Elementary] were incredibly upset when the letter was sent home yesterday … that she would be here,” said Courtney Jackson, a mother of two. She said she didn’t want her children to find out she just stood by while public education was under attack.

“The parents of this school do not want her here,” Jackson said.

Alison Metzler, another protesting parent, said she kept her kids home from school Tuesday because she didn’t want them to be used as “political pawns” by Sanders and McMahon.

“Sarah Huckabee and McMahon are actively trying to dismantle public education, and they do not care about public education. This is all for show, and it’s, it’s just disgusting,” Metzler said. “If Sarah Huckabee really stood with public education, her kids would go to public schools. Instead, they go to the private school a mile down the road, and she’s defunding these exact schools.”

Metzler also criticized Sanders and McMahon for visiting the “whitest affluent school in the Little Rock School District, a top school in the state.” She said she loved the school as a parent with a child who attended, but that if Sanders was really committed to public education, she would be visiting struggling schools in other parts of Little Rock.

“[Roberts Elementary] is not a representation of what the whole district is as a whole,” she said.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

it’s just disgusting

---

SHADOW DOCKET

During the first six months of President Donald Trump's second term, the Supreme Court has frequently issued emergency docket (also known as the "shadow docket") rulings that have usually gone Trump's way. And at least one justice is admitting that the shadow docket is not popular even among his own colleagues.

According to a Thursday evening report in the Daily Beast, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who Trump appointed to the Court in 2018 – spoke about the Roberts Court's shadow docket rulings during a recent conference in Missouri. Kavanaugh acknowledged that the shadow docket's brief decisions that rarely offer details on why the justices ruled the way they did is a divisive topic among the nine members of the High Court.

"I think there are different views among members of the court about when to do it and when not," he said. "We’re nine independent people."

READ MORE:'This is a good one right?' Epstein victim recalled being introduced to Trump at age 14

"There can be a risk in writing the opinion of lock-in effect – of making a snap judgment and putting it in writing, in the written opinion, that is not going to reflect the final view," he added.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

The Brennan Center for Justice explained that while the Supreme Court's "merits docket" happens during its regularly scheduled term, and has decisions that are thoroughly explained in detail, the shadow docket decisions usually happen between terms, and come with little to no explanation. And while merits docket cases are accompanied by briefings publicly submitted by both plaintiffs and respondents and have oral arguments, shadow docket decisions have neither briefings nor hearings, and can sometimes be handed down in the middle of the night.

One recent controversial shadow docket ruling — in which the Court's six conservatives voted as a united bloc — allowed the Trump administration to hollow out the Department of Education. That ruling overturned a previous decision by a lower court judge, and gave no reasoning for its decision. And after another 6-3 shadow docket ruling allowing Trump to fire three Democratic appointees on the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit System Protection Board, Justice Elena Kagan (appointed by former President Barack Obama) slammed both that decision and the Roberts Court's reliance on the shadow docket.

"Once again, this Court uses its emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress," Kagan said.

---

MMA

Project 2025 contributors celebrate the Trump administration moving to dismantle the Department of Education

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 07/16/25

The Heritage Foundation and other Project 2025 partners are praising the Supreme Court decision opening the doors for President Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education — a key Project 2025 initiative marking another U-turn from Trump's early disavowal of the unpopular transition plan.

The court's July 14 ruling allows the administration to continue with the reduction in force of over 1,300 Education Department employees, more than one-quarter of the department's workforce. Trump praised the decision in a post on Truth Social, writing, “The Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.”

The ruling also reverses a block on Trump's March executive order to close the department, though officially shuttering it requires congressional approval. The lower court judge who had halted the administration's efforts claimed the layoffs alone would effectively “cripple” the department.

The Department of Education has already struggled with enforcing civil rights laws and supporting students with disabilities since the Trump administration ordered a freeze on new cases and pressured the office to focus on investigations into transgender students on sports teams and antisemitism. The approved layoffs will shutter seven regional civil rights offices in major cities like New York and Chicago. The department’s Federal Student Aid office, which has already battled technical difficulties due to layoffs, is also facing large cuts. According to a Time magazine review, reducing the FSA offices may “massively disrupt” student loan operations. Trump has announced plans to move many of these offices’ functions to other government departments such as Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration, both of which are also facing layoffs.

Alongside the personnel cuts and grand plans for closure of the department, the Trump administration is withholding billions of dollars in federal education grants to ensure they “align with President Donald Trump’s priorities,” effectively shuttering many after-school programs and other federally funded education initiatives.

Project 2025 — the extreme right-wing plan for a second Trump administration organized by the Heritage Foundation and over 100 conservative partners — pledged to “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools,” and “dismantle the federal role in public education.” Now, Project 2025 partner organizations are celebrating the Supreme Court ruling.

Extremist “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty posted, “Parents should raise children, not government bureaucrats,” and has already begun a campaign to eliminate the National Education Association.

Extreme anti-LGBTQ group the Family Research Council released an episode of its Washington Watch podcast in which host Tony Perkins claimed “the left is going to be fearmongering” about the cuts to the Department of Education but argued there will be little change to classrooms. Speaking with Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), Perkins praised the Supreme Court ruling, arguing it will “free up education at the state level to do what works.”

The Heritage Foundation's Jonathan Butcher appeared on The Steve Gruber Show and argued the layoffs and other changes to the department won't majorly affect students, repeating the claims that essential programs will simply be moved to other federal agencies. Butcher also attested that “Congress is going to look to disentangle the U.S. Department of Education and other federal responsibilities from federal law” to move education policies to the states.

Video

Citation

From the July 16, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's The Steve Gruber Show

All of the Trump administration's steps to dismantle the Department of Education reflect the goals of the Project 2025 policy book, Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation has argued for shuttering the Department of Education since the first Mandate for Leadership book published in 1981. The 2024 edition of Mandateincluded specific plans for demolishing the Department of Education in a chapter written by Heritage's Lindsey Burke.

Burke's chapter for Project 2025 called for the Trump administration to “devolve” the Department of Education “as a stand-alone Cabinet-level department" and recommended that its programs, offices, and personnel be moved to other federal agencies or completely eliminated. Project 2025 specifically argued that the department’s Office of Civil Rights “should move to the Department of Justice,” a plan that Education Secretary Linda McMahon echoed during her confirmation hearing. Burke also suggested that only “employees whose positions are determined to be essential to the mission” would possibly move to other agencies now handling their office's work.

Closing down the Department of Education is just one area of many policies where the Trump administration is following the lead of Project 2025.

For instance, in January, the Trump administration released an executive order requiring any federally funded schools to remove so-called “critical race theory,” “gender ideology,” and other “radical indoctrination” from their curriculums. This measure was taken directly from Mandate for Leadership, which called for lawmakers to prevent the teaching of CRT and to “take particular note of how radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children.”

---

AN 3 25 THE CONV

“And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education.”

Donald Trump made this promise in a Sept. 13, 2023, campaign statement and repeated it frequently on thecampaign trail.

Trump tried to make this long-standing pledge a reality on March 20, 2025, by signing an executive order that he said will “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.”

Trump said that he hopes Democrats would support his executive order. “I hope they’re going to be voting for it,” said Trump, speaking from the White House in front of a group of children seated at desks. “Because ultimately it may come before them.”

Project 2025, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, provides detailed recommendations for closing the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.

The Department of Education already announced on March 9 that it laid off more than 1,300 of its 4,100 employees.

Trump’s new executive order calls for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” according to a White House statement distributed to media.

I am an anthropologist and have been studying U.S. political culture for years. During Trump’s first presidency, I wrote a book about the extremist far right called “It Can Happen Here”. Since then, I have continued to study the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement, seeking to understand it, as the anthropological expression goes, “from the native’s point of view.”

Education policies in the U.S. are largely carried out at the state and local levels. The Education Department is a relatively small government agency, which as late as February 2025 had just over 4,000 employees and a US$268 billion annual budget. A large part of its work is overseeing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans as well as grants for K-12 schools.

And it ensures that public schools comply with federal laws that protect vulnerable students, like those with disabilities.

Why, then, does Trump want to eliminate the department?

A will to fight against so-called “wokeness” and a desire to shrink the government are among the four reasons I have found.

1. Education Department’s alleged ‘woke’ mentality

First and foremost, Trump and his supporters believe that liberals are ruining public education by instituting what they call a “radical woke agenda” that they say prioritizes identity politics and politically correct groupthink at the expense of the free speech of those, like many conservatives, who have different views.

Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives promoting social justice – and critical race theory, or the idea that racism is entrenched in social and legal institutions – are a particular focus of MAGA ire.

So, too, is what Trump supporters call “radical gender ideology,” which they contend promotes policies like letting transgender students play on school sports teams or use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, not biological sex.

Trump supporters say that such policies – which the Education Department indirectly supported by expanding Title IX gender protections in 2024 to include discrimination based on gender identity – are at odds with parental school choice rights or, for some religious conservatives, the Bible.

Race and gender policies are highlighted in Project 2025 and in the 2024 GOP’s “Make America Great Again!” party platform.

Trump has repeatedly promised, as he did on Aug. 14, 2024, in North Carolina, to “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

2. American Marxist indoctrination

For MAGA supporters, “radical left” wokeness is part of liberals’ long-standing attempt to “brainwash” others with their allegedly Marxist views that embrace communism.

One version of this “American Marxism” conspiracy theory argues that the indoctrination dates to the origins of U.S. public education. MAGA stalwarts say this alleged leftist agenda is anti-democratic and anti-Christian.

Saying he wants to combat the educational influence of such radicals, zealots and Marxists, Trump issued executive orders on Jan. 29 that pledge to fight “campus anti-Semitism” and to end “Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools.”

3. School choice and parental rights

Trump supporters also argue that “woke” federal public education policy infringes on people’s basic freedoms and rights.

This idea extends to what Trump supporters call “restoring parental rights,” including the right to decide whether a child undergoes a gender transition or learns about nonbinary gender identity at public schools.

The first paragraph of Project 2025’s chapter on education argues, “Families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.”

Diversity, according to this argument, should include faith-based institutions and homeschooling. Project 2025 proposes that the government could support parents who choose to homeschool or put their kids in a religious primary school by providing Educational Savings Accounts and school vouchers. Vouchers give public funding for students to attend private schools and have been expanding in use in recent years.

Critics of school vouchers, like the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions, argue that vouchers would diminish public education for vulnerable students by taking away scarce funding.

Trump has already issued a Jan. 29 executive order called “Expanding Educational Freedom and Educational Opportunity for Families,” which opens the door to expanded use of vouchers. This directly echoes Project 2025 by directing the Education Department to prioritize educational choice to give families a range of options.

4. Red tape

For the MAGA faithful, the Education Department exemplifies government inefficiency and red tape.

Project 2025, for example, contends that from the time it was established by the Carter administration in 1979, the Education Department has ballooned in size, come under the sway of special interest groups and now serves as an inefficient “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.”

To deal with the Education Department’s “bloat” and “suffocating bureaucratic red tape,” Project 2025 recommends shifting all of the department’s federal programs and money to other agencies and the states.

These recommendations dovetail with Trump’s broader attempt to eliminate what he and his MAGA supporters consider wasteful spending and deregulate the government.

Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 that establishes a “Department of Government Efficiency” headed by billionaire Elon Musk. Musk said on Feb. 4 that Trump “will succeed” in dismantling the Education Department.

Can Trump abolish the Education Department?

Trump’s executive order shuttering the Department of Education will almost certainly spark legal challenges in court.

Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota also introduced a bill in November 2024 to close the department.

Trump has dismantled other government agencies in his second term, chiefly the U.S. Agency for International Development, without the required congressional approval. A federal judge ruled on March 18 that the dismantling of USAID likely violated the Constitution and ordered the Trump administration to restore all USAID employees’ email and computer access.

Abolishing the Department of Education would legally require congressional approval and 60 votes to move forward in the Senate, which is unlikely since Republicans only have 53 seats.

Regardless of such legal challenges, Trump’s March 20 executive order will further weaken the Department of Education even as it remains in the crosshairs.

Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University - Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

---

2 /12 25 uc student govt sues doge coup [HIRING FREEZE, 50 SCHOOLS ON DEI SHIT LIST INC UC BERK

the hill 2 25

the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be kept out of the Department of Education’s systems until Feb. 17, in an agreement reached in a lawsuit brought by the University of California student government.

In a filing Tuesday, the student government and Education Department came to an agreement to keep all DOGE personnel out of the databases in order to obtain an extended briefing and hearing schedule.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama-era appointee, approved the agreement between the two sides and the first hearing will be on Friday.

The students, represented by Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer advocacy group, sued the federal agency Friday, arguing that allowing DOGE employees into the department’s database would violate federal privacy law and the Internal Revenue Code.

The Department of Education has sensitive information on millions of Americans and students.

“Defendants’ action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals continuous and ongoing access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that millions of Americans from all walks of life have no assurance that their sensitive information — and that of their parents and/or spouses — will receive the protection that federal law affords,” the lawsuit states.

Trump stopping Penny production; Obama supported initiative. Coin org fights Back

“And because Defendants’ actions and decisions are shrouded in secrecy, individuals do not have even basic information about what personal or financial information Defendants are sharing with outside parties or how their information is being used,” it continues.

The Hill has reached out to the Department of Education for comment.

The first target since DOGE gained access seems to be the Institute of Education Sciences, which has canceled 169 government contracts. DOGE also posted on social platform X that the Department of Education canceled “89 contracts worth $881mm” and “29 DEI training grants totaling $101mm,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Similar deals to keep some DOGE employees out of agencies for a limited time have occurred in other lawsuits against federal departments such as the Treasury Department.

---

---

//?

mma

Fox News' Dana Perino calls public sector unions a “new nemesis”

02/11/25

:{===

---

feb 8

trump-department-education-democrats

no lnx

Democratic Lawmakers Denied Entry to the Department of Education

It was the fourth agency this week that federal employees blocked congressional Democrats from entering amid a push to shutter government agencies and dramatically cut the federal work force.

House Democrats Denied Entry to the U.S. Department of Education

Several Democratic lawmakers attempted to access the department’s headquarters on Friday, after a request to meet with the acting education secretary went unanswered.

“We’re coming in. Don’t block the door. We’re coming in. Who are you?” “You’re not coming in.” “Who are you?” “Under whose orders?” “Who are you?” “Who are you, sir?” “Do you have business here? “Yes, we do.” (crowd shouting) “I have sent the secretary, I have sent the assistant secretary a letter, alerting her that we would be here today, and we have asked her for a meeting.” “Yeah, I don’t know that’s been accepted. So until that’s accepted.” “Who are you?” “What authority do you have?” “And what do you do here?” “What do you do here?” “I have security responsibilities.” “Get out of the way.” “We pay for your job. We pay you.” “I understand.” “We’re members of Congress, we’re not a threat.” “We’re members of Congress.” “Nobody has accepted a meeting.” “We haven’t heard that from the secretary. We haven’t heard that from her spokesman.” “I’m relaying that.” “You are not the spokesman for the department. You are a security guard.” “Are you prepared to stand here all night if we decide to stay?” “I guess, yeah.” “All right, well you just stay right there, then. And you just stay and stand there.” “Why are you letting us go to that desk like we were able to do last year?” “He’s a U.S. employee, right?” “No, he’s not.” “He’s not a U.S. employee.” “This is a public institution.” “Did Elon Musk hire you?” “Who do you work for?” “I’m a federal employee working for the education.” “Now they’ve called the police on us.” “Advocate on behalf of your children.” “Trump and Musk have placed DOGE staffers in the building, where they have access to the private data of millions of students and families. Already, they have placed dozens of employees who perform vital services on which our schools, teachers and students depend, on leave. We will not cede the responsibility for our future generations to one man, his ideology and his unelected lieutenants.”

Several Democratic lawmakers attempted to access the department’s headquarters on Friday, after a request to meet with the acting education secretary went unanswered.

}:

By Robert Jimison

Reporting from Washington

Feb. 8, 2025

In a striking display of the limits being placed on congressional authority in the first weeks of the new administration, several Democratic lawmakers were denied entry to the U.S. Department of Education on Friday.

“Get out of the way,” Representative Maxine Waters of California told a man blocking more than a dozen House Democrats from the doors at the department’s Washington offices. The man, who was not identified by name, said he was a federal employee working for the department.

“Did Elon Musk hire you?” asked Representative Becca Balint of Vermont.

“This is an outrage,” Representative Mark Takano of California shouted as he and his colleagues were physically blocked from entering the building. “We have oversight responsibilities,” he said during the unsuccessful attempt to enter.

The clash, captured on video by multiple members, was yet another episode that became a flashpoint in the intensifying battle over the administration’s efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy.

“They are blocking members of Congress from entering the Department of Education! Elon is allowed in and not the people? ILLEGAL,” Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida wrote in a post.

It is unclear, however, if the federal employee violated any laws by refusing entry. While members of Congress do have an oversight role over federal agencies, that power is typically exercised through hearings and enforcement of policies.

And while the Constitution grants Congress the power to establish federal government offices, it is unclear whether individual members are granted unfettered access to those buildings.

Lawmakers have expressed frustration with the broader transformation underway within the federal government, where Elon Musk — the world’s wealthiest man and the head of what Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency — has been granted an unusual degree of influence.

The standoff follows a campaign promise by President Trump to dismantle and eventually shut down the Department of Education, which he has characterized as an agency injecting extreme ideology on race and gender into the nation’s public schools.

“We will move everything back to the states, where it belongs,” he said during one campaign speech. “They can individualize education and do it with the love for their children.”

Since taking office, a number of broader actions by Mr. Trump have directly affected the Department of Education and its work force.

Last month, employees across the Education Department were put on administrative leave. The department cited guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, which had instructed federal agencies to submit plans for reducing staff associated with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by the end of the day on Jan. 31.

Alarmed by the action and threats of more efforts to overhaul the department, Democratic lawmakers sent a letter late Wednesday seeking a meeting with Denise L. Carter, the acting education secretary. When their request went unanswered, they showed up at the department’s headquarters on Friday morning, only to find themselves denied entry.

No official explanation was given for the refusal of entry, and lawmakers grew more agitated at the arrival of armed federal officers. The Education Department did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

“We aren’t dangerous,” Mr. Frost wrote in a social media post. “We are here to represent our people.”

Similar scenes played out throughout the week at other agencies where Democratic lawmakers were locked out, including Treasury Department offices, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Environmental Protection Agency.

See more on: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Education Department (US), Democratic Party

---

an 2 25

The Trump administration continued its head-scratching appointments by anointing billionaireLinda McMahon as Secretary of Education — even though he had campaigned on a pledge to abolish the department. The president has expressed his hope that McMahon would eventually “put herself out of a job.”

She has been part of the president’s inner political circle, but is best known as president and co-founder, with her husband, of World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon used to be a wrestler herself. Her only K-12 experience was a brief stint on the Connecticut Board of Education, although she feels wrestling showed her what all students should learn about respect, leadership and such.

But then – surprise! – the deputy education secretary spot went to Penny Schwinn, who is far more famous to the likes of us education writers. Schwinn’s deep, impressive bona fides include becoming a teacher through Teach for America, followed by service as a classroom history teacher, school principal and then a swift ride up high-level administrative posts in various states including Texas. In 2019, at 43, she became Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education.

In Education Next’s extended interview, Schwinn emphasizes that educators must aim every single decision not merely toward achievement, but toward the best interests of kids. This “North Star” helps her to sift through irrelevant political chaff so she can stay with her agenda even in the face of constant opposition.

“That is always going to be personal and emotional; however, we must find a way to engage in hard conversations without taking them personally,” she said.

I’m hard pressed to think of another current politician or education leader with such credible dedication to kids, no matter what.

Schwinn’s biggest claim to fame was an all-hands-on-deck initiative designed to shift reading instruction from the terrible 3-cueing system that teaches kids to guess words, to one that is science-based. At the time, COVID raged. But for her, reading is a “nonnegotiable goal.” In a mere two years, Tennessee’s third graders improved by eight percentage points on their state reading assessment. The state has just under 1 million K-12 students, with 74,000 third graders, so eight points is a big average jump for a cohort that size.

Furthermore, the just released 2022 NAEPs showed Tennessee with a slight increase while most all other states’ results declined to varying degrees. (Rhode Island’s scores declined by three percentage points.) Tennessee also did well in math, which can be a side benefit of helping kids unpack word problems and written directions.

When first appointed, Schwinn turned to Carey Wright, the education commissioner who pulled off what is known as the “Mississippi miracle,” a show-stopping leap from Mississippi’s frequent dead last ranking to becoming the only state that didn’t tank in the 2019 national NAEP reading test.

Last summer, Wright and Schwinn wrote an op-ed for The74 begging political leaders to listen to what the research is saying about learning, especially reading. They note that in the late 1990s, the feds poured $9 billion into excellent research, which then went largely ignored. Their dedication to data-driven decisions means Schwinn wants to beef up federal research, not shut it down. (Yes, I know the feds are angling to shutter the Department of Education. But why would she take the job if that were really the goal?)

I’m hard pressed to think of another current politician or education leader with such credible dedication to kids, no matter what.

What really wins my heart are leaders who can change their minds with the right evidence and articulate reasons to make the change.

For example, in 2021, true to the Republican playbook, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law mandating holding back third graders who did not pass a reading proficiency test. Without apparent appetite, Schwinn acknowledged it was her job to implement state laws. While punishing third graders did boost scores in some states, the long-term effects of removing 9-year-olds from their age and friend cohort is almost never good. Schwin did not fight the law, but her “Reading 360” initiative did reduce the vast numbers of retained kids. It opened many pathways to the fourth grade including intensive tutoring, after-school and summer reading camps, allowing families to agree to intervention during fourth grade, and more.

Also, to help kids from the educational get-go, she established the only national teacher apprenticeship program designed to drag higher education’s butt into the 21st century with preparation driven by current research and contemporary children.

Mind you, Schwinn is far from everyone’s cup of tea. She’s a Republican. But that’s hard to tell from the totality of her actions. Her work has infuriated both the orthodox left and right.

Eventually, for example, her efforts to sidestep the culture wars proved to be too obstructive to stay focused on the work. In 2023, Tennessee passed a law designed to scrub curricula of information about race and gender. Again, Schwinn said she’d honor state law. But no hardliner, her directive to the field was to “limit” such discussions, enraging culture warriors on both sides of the aisle. In the end, her efforts got swallowed up in those unproductive battles, so she quit that summer.

Did the president’s vetters know what they were getting into? The two appointments to the federal DOE seem like a contradiction in terms — a wrecking ball and a design-build contractor. But Schwinn doesn’t seem like the kind of woman to put her North Star away, so she must have been convinced she could do real work.

Of course, we’ll see. The best interests of the kids could use a true champion. Good luck, Deputy.

===

mma 11 24 only one?

JOE MATHEIU HOST): We had heard from the transition team that no one from Project 2025 was invited, now we’ve got Homan, that apparently was not the case. Have you talked to Donald Trump since he won?

KEVIN ROBERTS: We’ve not spoken yet but I anticipate that we will.

MATHEIU: I mean he’s got to be pretty keyed up on what Heritage is offering here. He was on the record when the team was trying to distance itself from you – I have no idea who is behind it, he put on X, I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Do you have a sense of what he likes or doesn’t like here?

ROBERTS: I think the key thing is that President Trump saw the branding as a liability in the political season but I also would anticipate moving forward that the president-elect and vice president-elect with whom we maintain great relationships will also understand that it’s the policymaking season that Heritage and all of the other groups that are a part of our project are built for.

And if they’re looking, for example as President Trump said this morning, for a plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, we know exactly where he can go for that plan. Totally up to him about whether he uses the plan.

…

All of the political calculations of the last few months which were very understandable and about which we have no hard feelings are in the past. We’re now in the policymaking season, we think this is the beginning of a golden era of conservative reform. I will say that because the work of Project 2025 represents the conservative movement, it would be very difficult for anybody to implement policies on education, on the border, on taxation, without at least consulting those ideas and people.

---

---

alternet-logo

no lnx

Why Trump voters should be held accountable for their choice

John Stoehr November 13, 2024

For now, I’m not getting involved in the debate over what Kamala Harris did wrong. For one thing, whatever conclusions are drawn now will almost certainly be forgotten by the time of the next election. For another, the debate takes vital attention away from the choice of the majority of American voters, which is to say, their terrible choice.

Why did they break for Donald Trump? Lots of worthy people are going to spend lots of time exploring that question. I won’t, though. What I know is that Trump campaigned on easily proven lies. What I also know is his supporters chose to believe them. What I care about now are the consequences of that choice, and those consequences are going to be bad for all of us, including everyone who voted for him.

Yesterday, the president-elect said among the first things he’s going to do is eliminate the US Department of Education. That agency not only sends federal money to local school districts, it makes sure children are treated equally. This is usually understood in terms of race, but special-education is protected too, and it needs it. There was a time in American history when special-needs kids were told to sink or swim.

My kid is one of those kids, and if the funding and protection she now has disappears, I’m going to take that personally. I’m going to blame everyone who supported Trump. I won’t care if they didn’t believe he’d follow through on his pledge. I won’t care if they didn’t know about it. I won’t care if they were lied to by the rightwing media apparatus. I won’t care if the kids of Trump voters are themselves victims of their parents’ bad choices. I’m going to blame them and I will be right to.

Ignorance is no defense in law.

It should be no defense in politics either.

Trump has also promised to impose punishing tariffs on imported goods from countries like China and Mexico. Tariffs are a tax and every adult knows how a tax works. Yes, some of his supporters pretended not to know that importers pass that cost on to consumers. But whether they did or didn’t is going to be irrelevant to me when I’m paying two or three times more for necessities like food and clothing.

As I’m standing in the checkout at Stop & Shop, sticker-shocked for the umpteenth time, I’m not going to be wondering what Kamala Harris could have done to persuade white working-class Americans to vote for her. I’m not going to feel sympathy for them, knowing that they decided to impoverish themselves out of spite and resentment. No, I’ll be too busy cursing them for the titanic assholes they are.

Trump has also promised to deport millions of so-called illegal immigrants. He said he’ll only go after “the bad ones” and his supporters, even some Latinos, decided to believe a liar. But I’m not going to care how they came to that decision if the government starts snatching taxpayers out of their homes, arresting and detaining whole families, including US citizens, in the insane belief that doing so is going to make America great again. Why should I care about why they voted the way they did when the consequence of that choice brings chaos to communities, decimates the labor supply and raises prices?

Trump has denied it, but his Republicans are looking forward to taking another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans depend on Obamacare, including independent businesspeople, like me, who could not do what we do without the law. Voters who supported Trump are included in that number, but again, it does not matter to me whether they knew a vote for him was a vote for abolishing affordable insurance. I tend to lose interest in the reasons behind another person’s choices if those choices ruin me.

The conventional wisdom is that Trump inflamed resentments in order to win. What’s missing from that story is that the resentments are over race, or rather racism. Fact is, lots of white people feel like nonwhite people are taking something from them when they do better for themselves. Trump has made an art form out of getting white people to believe nonwhite people are robbing them, making them poorer, even when the economy is rapidly benefiting those same white people.

Well, when it comes to resentment, you haven’t seen anything yet.

If Trump does what he says, by the time he’s done, America is going to be poorer, sicker, weaker and more chaotic. In some cases, he will have done irreparable harm, as he did last time he was president, including to the people who supported him. And he will have done it because … well, it doesn’t matter. They made their choice and it was terrible.

And the rest of us will be right to resent it.

8 23

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-dana-perino-says-abolishing-department-education-great-goal

an 7 23 student debt cardona

...During the White House press conference following the court's decision, Cardona said, "Today, the court substituted itself for congress. It’s outrageous to me that Republicans in Congress and state offices fought so hard against a program that would have helped millions of their own constituents.They had no problem handing trillion dollar tax cuts to big corporations and the super-wealthy, and many had no problems accepting millions of dollars in forgiven pandemic loans.”

He continued, "Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma had more than $1.4 million in pandemic loans forgiven. He represents 489,000 eligible borrowers that were turned down today. Representative Brett Guthrie from Kentucky had more than $4.4 million forgiven. He represents more than 90,000 eligible borrowers that were turned down today. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia had more than $180,000 forgiven. She represents more than 91,800 borrowers who were turned down today."

https://www.mediamatters.org/glenn-beck/glenn-becks-radio-show-heritage-foundation-president-celebrates-his-plan-eliminate

GLENN BECK (HOST): So, let me re-ask, Kevin, just to clarify. I'm talking about things like shutting down the Department of Education.

KEVIN ROBERTS (GUEST): Yes.

BECK: Are you guys talking about those kinds of things?

ROBERTS: Oh, we're not just talking about it. We have the plan. In fact, literally sitting on my desk is the draft of that plan. And I'll be doing -- reading through that today. And so, let me be really, really blunt. We will eliminate the Department of Education piece by piece, block by block. It has to be part of the next administration in the first term. We also, as I know is a big interest of yours, going to up end the Department of Justice. And our plan for the Federal Bureau of Investigation is to select-all delete and start from scratch.

BECK: Wow.

ROBERTS: That gives you a sense of the vigor of this plan.

BECK: So, is this going to be something that will be able to be adopted, and talked about and given to people so they can say, hold the president, whoever it's going to be accountable and say, we want you to do this if you win?

ROBERTS: Absolutely. In fact, Glenn, historically, what Heritage and the conservative movement have done is issue this plan sometime after Election Day --

BECK: Yeah.

ROBERTS: Which is -- which. I mean, it was better than nothing, but --

BECK: Right.

ROBERTS: We're two years ahead. And so, the very reason that we're issuing this plan or parts of the plan in April of this year is precisely so that two things can happen. Number one, Americans, everyday Americans can be part of this and talking about it, asking people who want to be their elected officials about it. But secondly, to the heart of your question, when we start having debates among the Republican presidential aspirants, they're talking about that plan. It -- the plan becomes the very reason that we, as Republicans, will nominate someone.

===

ca kipp

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2016/10/03/education-department-continues-pour-millions-charter-school-blackhole/

==

2/16 alternet

leading progressive voices are warning that President Obama’s choice for education secretary could be a disaster.

An open letter to the U.S. Senate, published in the Washington Post on Thursday, asks lawmakers to reject the confirmation of John King as the new secretary of education.

King, the acting secretary of education, has a long history of supporting corporate-friendly education reforms, and has pushed for unpopular policies like more standardized testing and Common Core, which critics say are ineffective.

The letter is signed by world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky, along with journalist Naomi Klein, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and a host of other prominent scholars and activists, including some of the most established pro-public education voices.

A variety of teachers’ and public education organizations signed the letter as well, including New York for Public Education, Save Our Schools and Time Out From Testing.

The signatories warn King’s policies “have been ineffective and destructive to schools, educators, and most importantly students.”

“The American public deserves a Secretary of Education who will advocate for their interests, not those of the testing corporations who profit from the Common Core,” the letter reads.

As former education commissioner for New York state, King strongly supported Common Core and inBloom, an organization that collected sensitive private information of students (in Bloom has since been shut down).

The Washington Post notes that, during his time as New York’s education chief, King led extreme standardized testing-heavy reforms that, for instance, made art teachers responsible for students’ math test scores.

In fact, King’s push for Common Core and standardizing testing designed by the corporate education giant Pearson — which has been widely criticized for putting profit over effective policy — “was considered such a disaster that New York. Gov Andrew Cuomo wrote in a letter to top state education officials that ‘Common Core’s implementation in New York has been flawed and mismanaged from the start,'” the Post reports.

Because of King’s policies, 20 percent of test-takers across New York refused to take the tests in protest.

King stepped down from the position in December 2014, after years of protests, and moved to D.C. to serve under Education Secretary Arne Duncan. When Duncan stepped down in late 2015, King was next in line.

The signatories of the open letter, which is included below, insists King “is the wrong choice for the position.”

==

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13019/feds-cheerlead-charter-schools-aiding-private-philanthropy%E2%80%99s-takeover-america%E2%80%99s

With the Walton billionaires doubling down in their efforts to accelerate the charter school industry and with the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, throwing in $100 million to privatize traditional public schools, one might think that the U.S. Department of Education would be a major line of defense for America's public schools educating the most underserved students or even a bold investor in sustainable community schools that are truly public.

One would be wrong.

The U.S. Department of Education, as with the education agencies of many states, has been co-opted by the spending frenzy of the billionaire class.

It's not just the Waltons and Hastings using their fortunes to undermine public education: Eli Broad has pledged nearly a half billion dollars to privatize the public schools of Los Angeles. They are mounting a radical--or really a reactionary--effort to remake public schools into private enterprises, and charters are a key component of the transition the billionaires seek.

And editorial decisions by many in the press have aided and abetted this effort.

For example, the Walton family's press release about its new spending—which comes on top of the nearly $200 million they already spend on education "reform" each year—was widely reported, while the federal budget deal allocated $330 million more for charters was barely covered. The federal expansion of funding comes in the face of numerous scandals involving poor test results from so-called virtual charter schools and the documentation of more than $200 million of fraud and waste of taxpayer money by charter school operators.

But the billionaires' star power garnered coverage and repetition of the "reform" talking points, despite the manifest evidence of the failuresof many charter school experiments.

It's not just the press.

This movement that touts "choice"--as a more appealing frame than the "destruction" of truly public schools governed by local democracy--has been embraced by politicians who need financial support from billionaires to win their elections. And, increasingly, these political leaders have been followed into a variant of "public service" by cadres of school reform staffers and charter school cheerleaders who advance private interests.

A recent PowerPoint presentation created by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) underscores how complete that take-over is, after the federal government has itself spent billions in American tax dollars building up and buttressing the charter school industry.

Its 25-slide PowerPoint document, "The U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program Overview," is an uncritical PR document embracing a magical idea of charter schools.

While it is unclear what audience the department was targeting, it clearly shows how ED has become a propagandist for charter schools--despite the mountain of fraud and failure that investigators and bloggers have documented.

Some of the slides are comical to the point of parody. One enthusiastically asks, "Do states with the highest-performing charter schools receive [State Educational Agency] funding?" With 38 states receiving this funding, should it be surprising that some of them have some schools that test better than other charter schools that also receive funding?

Another slide says, "As of SY 2011-12, CSP-Funded Schools Serve a Similar Percentage of Students and Disabilities and Limited English Proficient Students as Traditional Schools," and then shows four lonely bar graphs. Nine percent of the students at Charter School Program-funded schools have disabilities and 11 percent at "traditional schools" do. Are percentages ever really "similar"? And can't the department's PowerPoint writers find a less defensive way to say, "Sometimes charter schools accept students with disabilities"?

With 20 years of data to draw from, many charter schools have failed and closed as the Center for Media and Democracy has noted, and many others have not been shown to boost student achievement. But as the industry has grown under federal funding, so has its lobbying muscle (largely at taxpayer expense). With each passing year the enthusiasm for charters increases among right-wing and libertarian school privatization advocates along with many of the reporters and pundits who rely on this heavily-bankrolled industry for quotes and claims.

Charter schools are supported by taxpayer dollars but exempt from many of the requirements and standards of truly public schools due to the way its architects created them through legislation peddled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Sometimes they are not governed by elected school boards and there is very little oversight concerning how they educate students or spend the money they get from the government.

Charters divert billions of taxpayer dollars from public schools and have been frequently exposed as fraudulent and wasteful. As CMD's lengthy investigation into charter school spending found, an undisclosed number of schools receiving millions in federal funds, cumulatively, have closed or never even opened. ED's PowerPoint does not tackle these thorny issues.

Instead, the very first slide of the ED PowerPoint asks, "What is the purpose and history of the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program?" It turns out that "evaluating the effects of public charter schools" is only the second of "four statutory purposes."

The other three, apparently independent of the effects the schools have, are 1) "Providing financial assistance for the planning, program design and initial implementation," and 3) "Expanding the number of high-quality charter schools available to students across the United States," and 4) "Encouraging states to provide support to charter schools for facilities planning."

In other words, once ED evaluates "the effects" of charter schools and finds that they do not help students or that they collectively weaken the state of public education in general, it still has a duty to fund them, create more of them, and get states to fund them. That explains a lot.

Slide number 4 reveals that the ED's Charter School Program has provided more than $3.3 billion to "fund the start-up, replication and expansion of public charter schools."

Very interesting.

CMD was unable to extract this number from DOE despite inquiries and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests since 2014. Ultimately, CMD calculated the amount at more than $3.3 billion(not adjusted for inflation) earlier in 2015, and more than $3.7 billion with the latest round of spending.

In October 2015, after waiting for incomplete answers from ED and state agencies, CMD published "Charter School Black Hole," a special investigation of federal charter school spending and its links to ALEC.

Two months later, on Christmas Eve 2015, EDreleased a list of the charter schools that had received federal funding since 2006. The list was incomplete, the dollar figures were still unclear, and everyone knows that you release information on Christmas Eve because you don't want anyone to see it. Still, it was something.

Now, it turns out, ED may have been tracking this information all along. The $3.3 billion it identifies is pretty close to the $3.3 billion CMD initially found after painstakingly combing through more than two decades of congressional appropriations. If you were a ED PowerPoint writer you might even call these numbers "similar." (Based on new appropriations by Congress, CMD has noted that the current tally is more than $3.7 billion.)

What is far too similar is the extent to which the Department of Education's charter school agenda matches that of the anti-education, pro-privatization movement that funds and promotes so much of the misinformation about public education.

This movement already gets all the support it needs from the Waltons, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, Bill and Melinda Gates, and tech billionaires.

Let's put the taxpayers' money to better use.

(*This op-ed was first published by Alternet.org, here.)

===

Glenn Beck's The Blaze is stoking fears of a sinister plot aimed at "indoctrinating children" with the "overtly controversial stance" that global warming is man-made with free books and SpongeBob SquarePants:

On July 20, 2011, kids in the Washington, D.C. area were treated to free books during a special U.S. Department of Education event. Two of the books that were offered featured popular Nickelodeon characters as part of the network's "Big Green Help Series," a campaign encouraging children to help protect the Earth.

But one of these publications takes an overtly controversial stance, as it promotes the idea that global warming is a man-made problem that requires human intervention in order to be stemmed.

Of course, there should be nothing remotely controversial about the idea that humans are contributing to climate change. Countless scientific organizations and groups long ago moved past the notion that the concept is "controversial." The controversy exists only in the fevered imaginations of right-wing commentators, like those at The Blaze, where it has become a point of pride to deny a massive body of scientific research.

SPOILER ALERT!

Not content to ruin science, The Blaze also gave away the ending of SpongeBob SquarePants in The Endless Summer while explaining why that particular episode of the cartoon was "implausible":

In the end, because of global warming, Mr. Krab's pool water boils away. But, don't despair. Once everyone in SpongeBob's hometown (remember, this all exists underwater, which makes the entire premise of the story implausible) starts planting trees, riding bikes and unplugging appliances, the community is restored. And, Mr. Krab even decides to give people a discount for coming to the pool if they walk or ride their bikes. Problem solved!

==