Trump To Fire Dept of Education Workers

The above is a drawing of mine from The New Yorker 1994.

I remember when the Department of Education was created in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. It was controversial, but in hindsight one wonders why we never had such an important department. The department manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools. Now, the Supreme Court has given Trump the green light to dismantle it by firing thousands of employees. This ruling is temporary while challenges are in the courts, the three liberal justices Sotomayor, Jackson and and Kagan wrote a dissent. This is a big win for Trump who wants control of education, ostenstibly to return education control to the state level; ideally to become more conservative and christian centered. The move immediately set up a legal fight over the future of the department because it was created by an act of Congress, and legislators had not given approval to eliminate it. In addition, a group of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over $6.8 billion in education funding that the administration has withheld a few weeks before the start of the school year. The suit claims this witholding of money is illegal.

This next story I was only marginally paying attention to. Not because it’s unimportant, but because I didn’t see it becoming anything. Trump has wiggled out of so many accusations of sexually inappropriate comments and actions, not to mention assault, that it was not clear to me this story would “get” him. I thought when he was caught on audiotape in 2016 talking about grabbing women’s genitals that he was toast. But we are watching some infighting among members of the Trump administration over the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein files, a list of his alleged clients in sex with underage girls. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had the list, Trump is now trying to ignore the story. Musk hinted that Trump is on the list, we know he was friends with Epstein. This story has an odd twist because originally, many die-hard Maga followers, as well as the Deputy Director of the FBI, were in favor of releasing the list because they believed Democrats were on the list and behind it and responsible for his death, (i.e. murdered) to prevent release of high profile client names. Now Trump is saying he doesn’t have the list, it’s a stupid story, etc; they are angry.

“This stinks. This just reeks,” was the verdict of Jesse Watters, the primetime Fox News host. He added: “The feds spent decades investigating Epstein and have had total access to his property for years, they still cannot give us a straight answer? This is not anything new; the government has been keeping us in the dark for generations.”

Epstein died by suicide while in federal custody, but rightwing conspiracy theorists believe he may have been killed before he could name famous people. The right has claimed that the list includes the names of prominent left-leaning politicians and celebrities.

Bondi appeared to confirm the existence of such a list during an interview with Fox News in February. Bondi was asked: “The Department of Justice may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients, will that really happen?”

She responded: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.” Some are now calling for her to be fired. This story may be something—we know Trump has always been s a sexual menace.

Thanks for being here, all. I am in Maine right now, and it’s so relaxing, despite the news. Hope you are well, see you tomorrow.