Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education

Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education
US President Donald Trump signs an executive order aimed at shutting down the Education Department in the East Room of the White house in Washington, DC, on March 20, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 21 March 2025
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Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education

Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education
  • The order is designed to leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards
  • The department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States
  • Democrats acknowledged on Thursday that Trump could effectively gut the department without congressional action

WASHINGTON: Flanked by students and educators, US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order intended to essentially dismantle the federal Department of Education, making good on a longstanding campaign promise to conservatives.
The order is designed to leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards, a prospect that alarms liberal education advocates.
Thursday’s order was a first step “to eliminate” the department, Trump said at a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Shuttering the agency completely requires an act of Congress, and Trump lacks the votes for that.
“We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,” said Trump in front of a colorful backdrop of state flags.
Young students invited to the event sat at classroom desks encircling the president and signed their own mock executive orders alongside him.
The signing followed the department’s announcement last week that it would lay off nearly half of its staff, in step with Trump’s sweeping efforts to reduce the size of a federal government he considers to be bloated and inefficient.
Education has long been a political lightning rod in the United States. Conservatives favor local control over education policy and school-choice options that help private and religious schools, and left-leaning voters largely support robust funding for public schools and diversity programs.

 

But Trump has elevated the fight to a different level, making it part of a generalized push against what conservatives view as liberal indoctrination in America’s schools from the university level down to K-12 instruction.
He has sought to re-engineer higher education in the United States by reducing funding and pushing to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies at colleges and universities, just as he has in the federal government.
Columbia University, for example, faced a Thursday deadline to respond to demands to tighten restrictions on campus protests as preconditions for opening talks on restoring $400 million in suspended federal funding.
The White House also argues the Education Department is a waste of money, citing mediocre test scores, disappointing literacy rates and lax math skills among students as proof that the return on the agency’s trillions of dollars in investment was poor.
Local battles over K-12 curricula accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, which saw parents angrily confront officials at school board meetings nationwide. It was a discontent that Trump, other Republican candidates and conservative advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty tapped into.
Trump was joined at the ceremony by Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Democrats acknowledged on Thursday that Trump could effectively gut the department without congressional action.
“Donald Trump knows perfectly well he can’t abolish the Department of Education without Congress — but he understands that if you fire all the staff and smash it to pieces, you might get a similar, devastating result,” US Senator Patty Murray said in a statement.

Seeking closure
Trump suggested on Thursday that he will still seek to close down the department entirely, and that he wants Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who attended the White House event, to put herself out of a job.
The department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States, although more than 85 percent of public school funding comes from state and local governments. It provides federal grants for needy schools and programs, including money to pay teachers of children with special needs, fund arts programs and replace outdated infrastructure.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion in student loans held by tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay for college outright.
For now, Trump’s executive order aims to whittle the department down to basic functions such as administering student loans, Pell Grants that help low-income students attend college and resources for children with special needs.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said. “It’s doing us no good.”
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democratic support would be required to achieve the needed 60 votes in the Senate for such a bill to pass. At the event, Trump said the matter may ultimately land before Congress in a vote to do away with the department entirely.
Trump has acknowledged that he would need buy-in from Democratic lawmakers and teachers’ unions to fulfill his campaign pledge of fully closing the department. He likely will never get it.
“See you in court,” the head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement.
A majority of the American public do not support closing the department.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found last month that respondents opposed shuttering the Department of Education by roughly two to one — 65 percent to 30 percent. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, surveyed 4,145 US adults and its results had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Federal aid tends to flow more to Republican-leaning states than Democratic ones. It accounted for 15 percent of all K-12 revenue in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, compared with 11 percent of revenue in states that voted for his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data.
Two programs administered by the Department of Education — aid for low-income schools and students with special needs — are the largest of those federal aid programs.


Three Hegseth aides ousted in leak investigation decry ‘baseless attacks’

Three Hegseth aides ousted in leak investigation decry ‘baseless attacks’
Updated 20 April 2025
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Three Hegseth aides ousted in leak investigation decry ‘baseless attacks’

Three Hegseth aides ousted in leak investigation decry ‘baseless attacks’
  • Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot also announced he was resigning this week

WASHINGTON: Three former senior advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decried on Saturday what they called “baseless attacks” after each was escorted from the Pentagon in an expanding probe on information leaks.
Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff were among four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle who were ousted this past week.
While the three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X said the three were “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”
“At this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with,” the post said.
Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot also announced he was resigning this week. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.
The upheaval comes less than 100 days into the Trump administration where the Pentagon has found itself frequently in the epicenter of controversial moves — from firings of senior military and civilian staff to broad edicts to purge content that promoted diversity, equity or inclusion. That led to images or other online content of heroes like the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson being temporarily removed from the military’s websites, causing public uproar.
Last month, Hegseth announced that the Pentagon’s intelligence and law enforcement arms were investigating what it says are leaks of national security information following reports that Elon Musk was set to receive a classified briefing on potential war plans with China.
In the announcement by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, the office warned that Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs in the probe.
The departures also follow the firings of senior military officers, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown; Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti; National Security Agency and US Cyber Command director Gen. Tim Haugh; and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the US military representative to the NATO Military Committee.

 


250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy
Updated 20 April 2025
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250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy
  • Historians can confidently tell us that hundreds of British troops marched from Boston in the early morning of April 19, 1775, and gathered about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest, on Lexington’s town green

LEXINGTON, Mass.: Tens of thousands of people came to Lexington, Massachusetts, just before dawn on Saturday to witness a reenactment of how the American Revolution began 250 years ago, with the blast of gunshot and a trail of colonial flair.
Starting with Saturday’s anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the country will look back to its war of independence and ask where its legacy stands today. Just after dawn on the Lexington Battle Green, militiamen, muskets in hand, took on a much larger contingent of British regulars. The battle ended with eight Americans killed and 10 wounded — the dead scattered on the grounds as the British marched off.
The regulars would head to Concord but not before a horseman, Dr. Samuel Prescott, rode toward the North Bridge and warned communities along the way that the British were coming. A lone horseman reenacted that ride Saturday, followed by a parade through town and a ceremony at the bridge.
The day offers an opportunity to reflect on this seminal moment in history but also consider what this fight means today. Organizers estimated that over 100,000 came out for events in the two towns Saturday.
“It’s truly momentous,” said Richard Howell, who portrayed Lexington Minute Man Samuel Tidd in the battle.
“This is one of the most sacred pieces of ground in the country, if not the world, because of what it represents,” he said. “To represent what went on that day, how a small town of Lexington was a vortex of so much.”
Among those watching the Lexington reenactment was Brandon Mace, a lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserve whose ancestor Moses Stone was in the Lexington militia.
He said watching the reenactment was “a little emotional.”
“He made the choice just like I made and my brother made, and my son is in the Army as well,” Mace said. .”.. He did not know we would be celebrating him today. He did not know that he was participating in the birth of the nation. He just knew his friends and family were in danger.”
The 250th anniversary comes with President Donald Trump, scholars and others divided over whether to have a yearlong party leading up to July 4, 2026, as Trump has called for, or to balance any celebrations with questions about women, the enslaved and Indigenous people and what their stories reveal.
What happened at Lexington and Concord?
Historians can confidently tell us that hundreds of British troops marched from Boston in the early morning of April 19, 1775, and gathered about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest, on Lexington’s town green.
Witnesses remembered some British officers yelled, “Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels!” and that a shot was heard amid the chaos, followed by “scattered fire” from the British. The battle turned so fierce that the area reeked of burning powder. By day’s end, the fighting had moved to about 7 miles (11 kilometers) west to Concord and some 250 British and 95 colonizts were killed or wounded.
But no one knows who fired first, or why. And the revolt itself was initially less a revolution than a demand for better terms.
Woody Holton, a professor of early American history at the University of South Carolina, said most scholars agree that the rebels of April 1775 weren’t looking to leave the empire, but to repair their relationship with King George III and go back to the days before the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and other disputes of the previous decade.
“The colonizts only wanted to turn back the clock to 1763,” he said.
Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose books include biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, said Lexington and Concord “galvanized opinion precisely as the Massachusetts men hoped it would, though still it would be a long road to a vote for independence, which Adams felt should have been declared on 20 April 1775.”
But at the time, Schiff added, “It did not seem possible that a mother country and her colony had actually come to blows.”
A fight for the ages
The rebels already believed their cause was bigger than a disagreement between subjects and rulers. Well before the turning points of 1776 — before the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Paine’s boast that “We have it in our power to begin the world over again” — they cast themselves in a drama for the ages.
The so-called Suffolk Resolves of 1774, drafted by civic leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, prayed for a life “unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles,” a fight that would determine the “fate of this new world, and of unborn millions.”
The revolution was an ongoing story of surprise and improvization. Military historian Rick Atkinson, whose book “The Fate of the Day” is the second of a planned trilogy on the war, called Lexington and Concord “a clear win for the home team,” if only because the British hadn’t expected such impassioned resistance from the colony’s militia.
The British, ever underestimating those whom King George regarded as a “deluded and unhappy multitude,” would be knocked back again when the rebels promptly framed and transmitted a narrative blaming the royal forces.
“Once shots were fired in Lexington, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren did all in their power to collect statements from witnesses and to circulate them quickly; it was essential that the colonies, and the world, understand who had fired first,” Schiff said. “Adams was convinced that the Lexington skirmish would be ‘famed in the history of this country.’ He knocked himself out to make clear who the aggressors had been.”
A country still in progress
Neither side imagined a war lasting eight years, or had confidence in what kind of country would be born out of it. The founders united in their quest for self-government but differed how to actually govern, and whether self-government could even last.
Americans have never stopped debating the balance of powers, the rules of enfranchisement or how widely to apply the exhortation, “All men are created equal.”
That debate was very much on display Saturday — though mostly on the fringes and with anti-Trump protesters far outnumbered by flag-waving tourists, locals and history buffs. Many protesters carried signs inspired by the American Revolution including, “Resist Like Its 1775,” and one even brought a puppet featuring an orange-faced Trump.
“It’s a very appropriate place and date to make it clear that, as Americans, we want to take a stand against what we think is an encroaching autocracy,” Glenn Stark, a retired physics professor who was holding a “No Kings” sign and watching the ceremony at the North Bridge.
Massachusetts’ Democratic governor, Maura Healey, who spoke at the North Bridge ceremony, also used the event to remind the cheering crowd that many of the ideals fought for during the Revolutionary War are again at risk.
“We see things that would be familiar to our Revolutionary predecessors — the silencing of critics, the disappearing people from our streets, demands for unquestioned fealty,” she said. “Due process is a foundational right. if it can be discarded for one, it can be lost for all.”
 


US Supreme Court intervenes to block Trump deportations

US Supreme Court intervenes to block Trump deportations
Updated 20 April 2025
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US Supreme Court intervenes to block Trump deportations

US Supreme Court intervenes to block Trump deportations
  • Trump justifies summary expulsions — and the detention of people in El Salvador — by insisting that he is cracking down on violent Venezuelan criminal gangs now classified by the US government as terrorists

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court, in a dramatic nighttime intervention Saturday, blocked President Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
The emergency ruling noted that two of the most conservative justices on the nine-member panel had dissented.
The order temporarily prevents the government from continuing to expel migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
Trump invoked the law last month to deport Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador that holds thousands of that country’s gangsters.
The court decision was triggered by imminent plans late Friday to expel dozens more Venezuelans under the act, meaning they would have been deported with next to no ability to hear evidence or challenge their cases.
The court said “the government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order.”
Trump justifies summary expulsions — and the detention of people in El Salvador — by insisting that he is cracking down on violent Venezuelan criminal gangs now classified by the US government as terrorists.
But the policy is fueling opposition concerns that the Republican is ignoring the US constitution in a broader bid to amass power.
The row over the Alien Enemies Act comes amid muscular assaults by the administration against big law firms, Harvard and other universities, and major independent media outlets.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the lead in seeking to halt Friday’s planned deportations, welcomed the Supreme Court ruling.
“These men were in imminent danger of spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had a chance to go to court,” attorney Lee Gelernt said.
On Saturday the government filed a motion with the Supreme Court arguing that it should not be prevented from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people it says are terrorists.
The government also asserted that even if it is blocked, the court should state that such deportations can go ahead using other laws.
Trump won the White House election last November in large part on promises to combat what he repeatedly claimed is an invasion of criminal migrants.
Trump’s rhetoric about rapists and murderers descending on suburban homes resonated with swaths of voters concerned about high levels of illegal immigration.
Trump has sent troops to the Mexican border, imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for allegedly not doing enough to stop illegal crossings, and designated gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as terrorist groups.
A right-wing influencer who meets often with Trump, Laura Loomer, said Saturday that the president was “gracious” for flying out people who entered the country illegally, rather than having them “shot to death” at the border.
Democrats and civil rights groups have expressed alarm at an erosion of constitutional rights.
Under Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — previously seen only during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — migrants have been accused of gang membership and sent to El Salvador without going before a judge or being charged with a crime.
Trump has also repeatedly said he would be open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to the notorious El Salvador prison, CECOT, outside San Salvador.
Attorneys for several of the Venezuelans already deported have said their clients were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
In the most publicized case to date, Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported last month to CECOT before the Trump administration admitted he was sent there due to an “administrative error.”
Even after a court ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump has doubled down and insisted he is a gang member — including posting an apparently doctored photo on social media Friday that showed MS-13 on his knuckles.
As court challenges pile up, the president and his allies have repeatedly attacked what they call “activist” judges.
Another right-wing influencer with a large social media following, Jesse Kelly, responded to the overnight order freezing deportations by posting: “Ignore the Supreme Court.”


Another round of anti-Trump protests hits US cities

Another round of anti-Trump protests hits US cities
Updated 20 April 2025
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Another round of anti-Trump protests hits US cities

Another round of anti-Trump protests hits US cities
  • Organizers hope to use building resentment over Trump’s immigration crackdown, his drastic cuts to government agencies and his pressuring of universities, news media and law firms, to forge a lasting movement

NEW YORK: Thousands of protesters rallied Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the United States for a second major round of demonstrations against Donald Trump and his hard-line policies.
In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans like “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.”
Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting “No ICE, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” a reference to the role of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in rounding up migrants.
In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process.
The administration is carrying out “a direct assault on the idea of the rule of law and the idea that the government should be restrained from abusing the people who live here in the United States,” Benjamin Douglas, 41, told AFP outside the White House.
Wearing a keffiyeh and carrying a sign calling for the freeing of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested last month, Douglas said individuals were being singled out as “test cases to rile up xenophobia and erode long-standing legal protections.”
“We are in a great danger,” said 73-year-old New York protester Kathy Valy, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, adding that their stories of how Nazi leader Adolf Hitler rose to power “are what’s happening here.”
“The one thing is that Trump is a lot more stupid than Hitler or than the other fascists,” she said. “He’s being played... and his own team is divided.”

Daniella Butler, 26, said she wanted to “call attention specifically to the defunding of science and health work” by the government.
Studying for a PhD in immunology at Johns Hopkins University, she was carrying a map of Texas covered with spots in reference to the ongoing measles outbreak there.
Trump’s health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, spent decades falsely linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) jab to autism.
“When science is ignored, people die,” Butler said.
In deeply conservative Texas, the coastal city of Galveston saw a small gathering of anti-Trump demonstrators.
“This is my fourth protest and typically I would sit back and wait for the next election,” said 63-year-old writer Patsy Oliver. “We cannot do that right now. We’ve lost too much already.”
On the West Coast, several hundred people gathered on a beach in San Francisco to spell out the words “IMPEACH + REMOVE,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Others nearby held an upside-down US flag, traditionally a symbol of distress.
Organizers hope to use building resentment over Trump’s immigration crackdown, his drastic cuts to government agencies and his pressuring of universities, news media and law firms, to forge a lasting movement.
The chief organizer of Saturday’s protests — the group 50501, a number representing 50 protests in 50 states and one movement — said some 400 demonstrations were planned.
Its website said the protests are “a decentralized rapid response to the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration and its plutocratic allies” — and it insisted on all protests being non-violent.
The group called for millions to take part Saturday, though turnout appeared smaller than the “Hands Off” protests across the country on April 5.
 


Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided

Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided
Updated 19 April 2025
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Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided

Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided
  • “Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow,” Zelensky said

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that, according to his top commander, Russian artillery fire had not subsided despite the Kremlin’s proclamation of an Easter ceasefire.
“As of now, according to the Commander-in-Chief reports, Russian assault operations continue on several frontline sectors, and Russian artillery fire has not subsided,” Zelensky wrote on the social media platform X.
“Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow.”


He recalled that Russia had last month rejected a US-proposed full 30-day ceasefire and said that if Moscow agreed to “truly engage in a format of full and unconditional silence, Ukraine will act accordingly — mirroring Russia’s actions.”
“If a complete ceasefire truly takes hold, Ukraine proposes extending it beyond the Easter day of April 20,” Zelensky wrote.