TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL

Elon Musk’s cronies have been set loose to dismantle the Education Department, sparking chaos and raising concerns about what comes next.

• President Donald Trump and the far-right have long dreamed of burning down the Department of Education, as part of their larger goal of dismantling public education entirely. What would that look like? What would replace the department? Well, they haven’t gotten that far in the planning process. Now, Trump is out to make that dream nightmare a reality, preparing to sign an executive order that would eventually shutter the agency. Before that can even happen, though, centibillionaire Elon Musk is working closely with Trump to destroy the department from the inside.

• The past couple days have been extremely chaotic, to say the very least. Career staff inside the DOE aren’t sure what work they’re supposed to be doing — even as the Trump administration fills the agency with its own appointees, a senior education official told What A Day. Staffers from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE — which isn’t an official federal agency!!! — are also looking for ways to cut spending and staff there, the Washington Post reports.

• “It’s a shit show,” a senior education official told What A Day. “DOGE is combing through contracts and recommending termination with no consideration of the cost.” There are rumors that federal student loans could be moved under the Treasury Department and the Office of Civil Rights placed under the Justice Department, the official added. (The Education Department didn’t respond to What A Day’s request for comment.)

Closing the Education Department isn’t possible without Congress’s approval — at least not in theory.

• Only Congress has the legal power to actually shut down the department, a fact that Trump’s executive order acknowledges. Instead, the order calls on the agency to shut down many of its functions that aren’t explicitly written into statute, among other measures to shrink it, the Wall Street Journal reports. Lawmakers have shown very little interest in getting rid of it.

• But what would it mean for everyday Americans if the Department of Education were forced to shut its doors? The agency sets education standards across the country, funds elementary and secondary schools, protects students against racial and sex-based discrimination in schools, manages financial aid, and doles out student loans and grants. If it ceased to exist, states could have more power over most of those things. Republican states would likely gut diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. They could also change curriculum testing standards to erase teaching about systemic racism, and anything even vaguely in the neighborhood of gender studies, as Trump already ordered.

• But that’s far from the worst of it. This would in effect strip federal funding from over 98,000 public schools, which would be particularly devastating in terms of special education programs, and would disproportionately harm children in GOP-led states, where relatively little state funding is allocated to schools and where many Republican lawmakers have sought to expand voucher programs for private schools which further defund public schools. It’s unclear how student loans and other financial matters would be affected if they’re moved under a different department — but the process would certainly be chaotic for millions of Americans.

• Expect a titanic battle ahead. Before Trump took office, his transition team drafted an order that would have had the education secretary dismantle the agency and call on Congress to abolish it, the Journal reports. Who’s in charge right now? No one! Linda McMahon, the billionaire wrestling mogul, still has to be confirmed for the job by lawmakers.

It almost feels like Donald Trump is challenging Republicans to reject McMahon, knowing full well that most of them will cave — even if it’s her job to blow up her own department.

WILDFIRE CREW

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking all of its disaster response volunteers to be ready to help clean up hazardous materials left by the Los Angeles wildfires — and finish within a month, according to a memo obtained by What A Day.

The problem: People within the agency see that timeframe as unrealistic, and believe those volunteers aren’t sufficiently trained to work on the ground in disaster zones, according to our reporting.

In a message sent last week, Acting Administrator James Payne cited Donald Trump’s executive order to “improve” disaster response to California, which has seen raging wildfires burn hundreds of thousands of acres. Employees who are part of the Response Support Corps should be ready to help complete the clean-up within 30 days, Payne added.

These are volunteers who don’t perform disaster relief full-time. They have day jobs focused on things like economics, policy, water management, any job you can imagine. They’re not all fully trained to do the work being asked of them.

Cleaning hazardous materials after a wildfire requires entering every property to look for what needs to be disposed of. Examples include lithium ion batteries in every electric vehicle and many solar panels attached to homes. Those would need to be fully destroyed and then disposed of somewhere safe.

This development is another example of the Trump administration leaning on the federal workforce to operate in non-traditional ways, or go outside their normal mission. In some cases, such as USAID, employees are being asked to simply stop working. In this case, there are concerns within the EPA that the personal safety of the workers could be a serious issue — just to make Trump look like he’s achieving something.

The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment from What A Day.

Side note: The Trump administration has ordered EPA researchers to stop holding seminars in which they share information with staff, an agency spokesperson confirmed to What A Day. Some public webinars “are being reviewed and may be rescheduled … to ensure transparency and accountability to the American people,” the spokesperson said.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Donald Trump said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take in displaced Palestinians from Gaza, but said he doesn’t necessarily support Israel settling the territory. (Last week, I broke down why those countries don’t want to take refugees.) Trump also believes Palestinians “would be thrilled” to leave Gaza, their home, because Israel has decimated the area. The man doesn’t have a basic sense of human sympathy.

Brainworm survivor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. passed a key hurdle today in his bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, after the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-13 to move his nomination forward. There was speculation that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a former physician, would block the famed anti-vaxxer. But in the end, Cassidy ended up licking Trump’s boot, as so many others have. Profiles in courage!

Trump is expected to sign an executive order tomorrow banning transgender girls and women from playing sports in high schools and colleges. The details of the order are still unclear, but its title underscores Trump’s attempt to pretend that transgender people don’t exist: “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” What about trans men and boys? Do they know they exist?

About 20,000 federal workers have opted to resign amid Trump’s pressure campaign to push out employees who aren’t loyal, Axios reports. That’s almost 1 percent of the federal workforce — far less than the White House’s 5 percent to 10 percent goal.

China unveiled retaliatory tariffs against the United States, targeting energy products such as coal and oil, as well agricultural machinery and some cars. Beijing also announced an anti-trust investigation into Google. They really know how to hit Trump where it hurts this time around!

The Treasury Department was sued by union groups affiliated with the AFL-CIO for giving Elon Musk’s DOGE access to federal systems that include financial and personal data, teeing up a massive legal showdown.

El Salvador has offered to accept any deportee from the United States, even those being held in maximum security prisons, for a small fee. President Nayib Bukele said the deportees could be housed in the country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the world’s largest prison designed to hold 40,000 inmates. (Bukele has infamously arrested more than 1 percent of his country’s population — coincidence that he’s a Trump-Musk ally?)

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has apparently felt left out of the Eurovision Song Contest after being banned for invading Ukraine, so he created his own version called Intervision. Get up there, Vlad! Do the “Rasputin” dance!

UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell said that he’s ‘definitely not a Nazi’ after saying on a podcast that Hitler “was a guy I’d go fishing with.” (Who goes fishing… with Hitler??? Fish with your dad or something, smh.) Mitchell applauded Hitler for wanting to “purify” Germany by “kicking the greedy Jews out that were destroying his country and turning them all into gays.” Unsurprisingly, UFC CEO Dana White — a Trump ally — said Mitchell won’t face any consequences… because it’s “free speech.”

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