President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has terminated nearly $1 billion in contracts with the federal Department of Education (ED) and cut 29 DEI programs costing taxpayers $101 million. While further revelations await, the people should know that ED has no constitutional foundation – education is the purview of the states – and has existed only since 1979.
In 1976, the National Education Association, the nation’s most powerful teacher union, endorsed Jimmy Carter for president. The Georgia Democrat returned the favor by establishing the federal Department of Education, which did nothing to improve student achievement. That was confirmed in 1983 by A Nation at Risk, which contended that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”
ED was more about fattening the government payroll and boosting government power. Consider the actions of Biden education secretary Dr. Miguel Cardona, for example. Cardona’s “doctoral degree,” like Jill Biden’s, is in education, a non-discipline most useful as a bureaucratic credential. A classic zealot, Cardona used new Title IX regulations to impose gender junkthought.
“In a nutshell, the new rewrite means: – men can take academic AND athletic scholarships from women,” Riley Gaines explained. “Men will have FULL access to bathrooms, locker rooms, etc – men could be housed in dorm rooms with women – students and faculty MUST compel their speech by requiring the use of preferred pronouns If the guidelines above are ignored or even questioned, then YOU can be charged with harassment.” Cardona also deployed ED against schools congressional Democrats don’t like.
Grand Canyon University is an independent college that “reaches a broad variety of like-minded Christian congregations and organizations,” and many students want to attend. By contrast, Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro called GCU a “predatory for-profit school.” The dutiful Cardona told her ED was aiming “to shut them down” and hit GCU for $37.7 million, the “largest fine in history against a school that lied about costs,” and so on. Compare Cardona’s predations with Obama ED boss Arne Duncan.
At Harvard, Duncan wrote a thesis on “The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass” but did not seek a career in sociology. Duncan played professional basketball in Australia and in 2001 Chicago mayor Richard Daley tapped the hoopster to run Chicago schools. In 2008, composite character president Barack Obama selected Duncan for his secretary of education.
Like Bill Clinton, Obama sent his own children to the prestigious Sidwell Friends school, out of reach for most DC families. Their best alternative is the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program, a school choice program run by Congress. Teacher unions and federal education bureaucrats oppose that choice program and all others.
As the Washington Post noted, Duncan decided “to rescind scholarships awarded to 216 families for this upcoming school year,” and “nine out of 10 students who were shut out of the scholarship program this year are assigned to attend failing public schools.” If any of the students and their parents thought that was racist it would be hard to blame them. On Duncan’s watch, ED also ramped up abuse.
Defaults on student loans had been increasing since 2003, so ED deployed an enforcement division armed with Remington model 870 shotguns. In 2011, ED agents raided the California home of Kenneth Wright, who was handcuffed and put in a police car along with his three young children. As it turned out, the raid was for a student-aid issue involving Wright’s estranged wife, not present at the time.
Duncan prevailed as ED boss from 2009 to 2016 but his duty for Democrat politicians wasn’t done. “Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here?” Duncan wondered in 2021, during Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. “They both blow themselves up, inflict harm on those around them, and are convinced they are fighting for freedom.” So Obama’s partisan ED boss was still spouting ignorance.
In effect, the federal Department of Education functions like a domestic USAID, dispensing money to favored clients, blocking parental choice in education, and promoting woke ideology, with no accountability to taxpayers. While DOGE digs up ED’s waste, fraud and abuse, the Trump administration can target another Carter legacy.
The Georgia Democrat backed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which created the Senior Executive Service (SES), a corps of coddled bureaucrats tasked to ensure performance “of the highest quality” in government. As with ED, it didn’t exactly work out that way. After a few years few performance gains were evident and SES bosses were unhappy with the pay.
Between 2008 and 2011, the elite SES bosses bagged more than $340 million in bonuses, on top of their salaries and not subject to budget cuts. True to form, the SES insignia is a gold keystone, and the agency boasts its own flag. SES bosses are the equivalent of Soviet zampolits, political officers who enforce ideology. “Strengthening the Senior Executive Service,” Obama’s 2015 executive order, sought to “facilitate career executive continuity between administrations.”
As the people should know, SES bureaucrats serve in some 75 federal agencies, including the Department of Justice and Secret Service. Executive management “of the highest quality” was hardly evident in the service’s performance on July 13, 2024, when a 20-year-old with no tactical experience got off eight shots, one wounding President Trump in the ear. Maybe an axis of deep state forces tried to facilitate the continuity between administrations that eluded them in 2016.
Whatever the case, Donald Trump survived the assassination attempt and won the presidency, a comeback for the ages against incredible odds. President Trump should now give ED and SES the existential problem they deserve. That will be a huge win for the people moving forward.