Back to School
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Secretary McMahon: Our Department's Final Mission
Does anyone in the United States think that education is working?
‘This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons.‘
Draft of Trump Executive Order Aims to Eliminate Education Department
This will not be as easy to implement as they think.
‘A draft of the order, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”’
Trump’s Worthy Effort to Rein In ‘Independent’ Agencies
John Yoo knows that the real impact will be if the independent agencies are brought to heel.
‘Despite all the progressive fire and brimstone descending on Elon Musk, his Department of Government Efficiency is making only a down payment on shrinking the administrative state. Firing thousands of federal employees may reduce fraud, waste, and abuse, but the frontal assault on unconstrained government will come if President Donald Trump succeeds in bringing the so-called independent regulatory agencies to heel.
‘These “alphabet” agencies exercise vast power over the American economy and society. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, controls the stock and bond markets and dictates what information companies must disclose. The National Labor Relations Board supervises all union activity in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission controls the telephone and internet networks. The Federal Trade Commission seeks to bless or stop every merger in the nation. These commissions have run riot, and not even the federal government can produce an exact accounting of the costs that they impose on the economy, or even their actual number. These agencies had their start during the Progressive Era under Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and grew under Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama.’
DOJ Will Appeal Obama Judge’s Inevitable Ruling That Trump Can’t Fire Special Counsel
Key to the moves to control the independent agencies is the case of the special counsel. Andy McCarthy goes deep.
‘To repeat what I’ve contended before, Jackson’s position is weak, and it doesn’t get better over 67 pages. She argues, for example, that the statute’s three grounds for presidential removal of the special are broad and cover all potentially worthy reasons for firing an official who wields executive authority; Trump, she counters, wants to be able to fire “on a whim or out of personal animus.” To the contrary, a president may want his power exercised by someone he has chosen and whom he trusts to adhere to his enforcement priorities. That is not a whim or personal animus — which Judge Jackson would certainly understand if Congress suddenly (and unconstitutionally) enacted standards that judges had to follow in hiring or firing law clerks.
‘Given the weight of authority holding that presidents must be able to remove executive officers at will, Jackson must also resort to the last bastion of jurists determined to dodge precedent: the office of special counsel is “sui generis.” We’re to believe this government bureaucracy is different from all the other government bureaucracies in all the past cases — in this instance, because it’s really small, it doesn’t affect the private economy, and, well, it was designed by well-meaning progressives to be independent. It protects “federal civil servants” from the “unethical” and “unlawful” practices of their politically empowered superiors (especially when those benighted voters elect Republicans!).
‘But no, the office of special counsel is not sui generis. It’s a prosecutor’s office. We’ve got an abundance of those. Of course we don’t want prosecutorial power to be politicized — not in the special counsel’s office and not in the Justice Department. In our system, however, we account for that possibility by making prosecutorial power politically accountable. Indubitably, it is to Judge Jackson’s chagrin that the voters ousted Democrats this time around, but she might take hope — just as the Trump administration should take heed — that this outcome had lots to do with the Democratic administration’s politicization of government prosecutorial powers against political foes.’
A Supreme Court Setback for Trump in the USAID Dispute May Not Be the Last Word
Don’t be surprised if the USAID case ends up back at the Supreme Court.
‘What this means is anybody’s guess, but by sending it back to Judge Ali with such open-ended instructions, the Court is encouraging a situation in which he will read this as a green light to do whatever he wants, while the administration argues that he is continuing to exceed his authority. That means the dispute is likely to end up back at the Court, because the administration isn’t going to let Judge Ali destroy its right to appeal by using a TRO or a preliminary injunction to make it pay out money it then cannot get back if it successfully appeals. In the meantime, the Court’s order doesn’t say specifically that the administration has to pay anything to anybody, and seems to contemplate that Judge Ali will merely order that payments be made “for work already completed.” It also suggests that he adjust his tight deadlines to consider “the feasibility of any compliance timelines” — which he doesn’t want to do because if the money takes days to go out the door, the government can appeal again before it has to comply. It at least suggests to Judge Ali that he ought to address this all in a preliminary injunction rather than a TRO; the reason why a TRO usually cannot be appealed is that it typically just orders that the status quo be preserved until a court has time to hear the arguments from both sides.’