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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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All the good public education I've seen in my life was good because of local rather than national decisions, so I can't credit the ED for them, and although in theory they might prove their worth by overriding bad local decisions, I've never heard of that happening. Hopefully someone will drop in to explain why I'm wrong.

On the other hand, though, the right way to shut down a department that's created and funded by an act of Congress is to end it with an act of Congress. From a process point of view, Trump's team is going to get legal challenges regardless but they could at least try to make sure the challenges are invalid. From an outcomes point of view, the Republicans still have a 5 vote lead in the House and they're at a 6 vote lead in the Senate, so if a Republican president can't get a bill through that then maybe push something that is moderate enough for a moderate Republican instead.

Yeah they definitely seem to be trying to just change things by fiat and come up with legal justifications later. I’m not sure that the political reconciliation strategy would even work, though. Seems like any time people try to compromise the deed of cutting never actually gets done.

No, the headlines are just misleading. Example:

Trump order to dismantle the education department in the works, sources say

But the story actually says

The proposed order gutting the agency is expected to call for the education secretary to submit a proposal for dismantling the department and for Congress to pass legislation to get rid of it.

I see, yeah I got sniped by an MSNBC headline. You'd think I would know better by now. Thanks for correcting me.

Truly the rule of 'if you can't guess how they are lying, you aren't trying hard enough' reigns again.