I mentioned earlier this week that a big part of Trump’s MO is firing off ten flares, letting everyone react to everything and then hanging back to decide on his own timetable which of those flares he’s actually going to follow through on. It’s critical to take back that initiative. When Trump and Republicans have a trifecta there’s little direct impact Democrats can have on any legislative decision. Lots of things are important, damaging. Go after things that are clearly unpopular. Political power is unitary. Landing a punch on one policy front reduces the White House’s ability to act everywhere else.
One thing that we are absolutely sure is going to happen is an extension of the 2017 tax cuts. This is a dead certainty. There are already rumblings that the Trump White House will cut the Affordable Care Act proper to get the money. But they are openly saying they will cut Medicaid to do it. (In the Trumpite taxonomy, defense, Medicare and Social Security are supposedly off limits.) But here’s the thing. With Medicaid expansion, Medicaid is functionally part of the ACA. Maybe some policy wonk will tell you they’re separate things. That’s silly. They’re not. Don’t listen to that silly person. Cutting Medicaid — through whatever means you choose to do that — is cutting the ACA. That’s a big reason why there are currently a historically low number of people uninsured. Donald Trump is going to hand out tax cuts and pay for it by cutting the ACA. Simple.
For many reasons, including a previously undisclosed allegation of sexual assault against him, Democrats have been sounding the alarm on veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s extreme lack of fitness to be the secretary of the Department of Defense.
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter two years ago, those who despise his evolving mix of predatory trolling, stunted emotional development and right-wing extremism have been hoping for an alternative. There was “Post”; Meta got into the act with “Threads”; another entity of at first uncertain origins actually got its start with one of Twitter’s former CEOs, Jack Dorsey. That was Bluesky. There was also Mastodon, a sort of Linux of social media networks. Part of the problem there was that you may not be familiar enough with Linux to understand the analogy. And if you do, you’re part of a potential community not nearly big enough to sustain a mass adoption social media platform. Each in succession thoroughly failed to dislodge or even make much of a dent in Twitter’s disordered and Frankensteinian dominance. It’s the power of network effects. Everyone can want to leave (or at least a big chunk of users can want that) and yet everyone is simultaneously trapped. It’s a collective action problem.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has just vetoed a sweeping Republican-backed bill — a power grab disguised as a hurricane relief bill — that Republican state lawmakers have tried to fast-track in the waning days of their veto-proof supermajority.
In the lame duck session, the energy on Capitol Hill is busy and frazzled, as Democrats try to squeeze in any lingering priorities before they’re shut out of power for at least two years. Republicans are largely intent on blocking or slowing down those priorities, while members jockey for position in the new trifecta.
If Trump does dismantle the Department of Education as he has promised to do, he will have succeeded at something that President Ronald Reagan vowed to do in 1980. Just like Trump, Reagan campaigned on abolishing the department, which at the time was only a year old. Since then, the Republican Party platform has repeatedly called for eliminating the Education Department, which oversees a range of programs and initiatives. These include special funding for schools in low-income communities – known as Title I – and safeguarding the rights of students with disabilities.
As an education policy researcher who has studied the federal role in addressing student-equity issues, I see the path to shuttering the department as filled with political and practical obstacles. Republicans may therefore opt to instead pursue a series of proposals they see as more feasible and impactful, while still furthering their bigger-picture education agenda.
To better understand how the proposal to eliminate the Education Department would fit within the larger educational agenda of the incoming administration, I believe it’s helpful to revisit the history of the Education Department and the role it has played over the past five decades.
Department of Education history and roles
By the time Congress established the department in 1979, the federal government was already an established player in educational policy and funding.
For instance, the Higher Education Act of 1965 began the federal student loan program. In 1972, Congress created the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, the predecessor program to today’s Pell Grants. The G.I. Bill of 1944, which, among other things, funded higher education for World War II veterans, preceded them both.
At the K-12 level, federal involvement in vocational education began with the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917. Federal attention to math, science and foreign language education began in 1958 with the National Defense Education Act.
Two laws passed during the Lyndon Johnson administration then gave the federal government its modern foothold in education: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The 1964 law provided antidiscrimination protections enforced by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The 1965 law, which is currently reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, includes Title I, which sends extra funding to schools with high populations of low-income students.
In 1975, Congress added the law currently known as the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, or IDEA. The law helps schools provide special education services for students with disabilities. IDEA also sets forth rules designed to ensure that all students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education.
Department had early Republican support
When Congress created the Education Department, it divided the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two agencies. One was the Education Department. The other was Health and Human Services, also known as HHS. Although President Jimmy Carter championed the move, it was bipartisan. The Senate bill to create the new department had 14 Republican co-sponsors.
Within a year, however, support for and opposition to the Education Department had become strongly partisan. Reagan campaigned on eliminating what he referred to as “President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle.”
To dissolve the Education Department, both houses of Congress would have to agree, which is unlikely. In 2023, an amendment was proposed in the House to shut down the department. It failed by a vote of 161-265, with 60 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposing the measure.
Even assuming that sufficient pressure were exerted on Republicans in 2025 to garner almost complete Republican House support, the bill would likely need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster – meaning that at least seven Democrats would have to support termination.
But what would such termination entail? The department’s functions and programs would need to be assigned to new institutional homes, since terminating a program’s department doesn’t terminate the program. That said, this shuffling process would likely be complicated and chaotic, harming important programs for K-12 and university students.
Another approach is set forth in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a detailed policy blueprint that, among other things, specifies landing places for the Education Department’s major functions and programs. A CNN review found that over 100 people involved with Project 2025 worked in the first Trump administration.
The Project 2025 blueprint calls for the lion’s share of programs, including Title I and IDEA, to be moved to HHS – which already administers Head Start. Most vocational education programs would be moved to the Labor Department. The Office for Civil Rights would be moved to the Justice Department. And the Pell Grant program and the student loan program would be moved to the Treasury Department.
Part of a larger education agenda
In the scenario where existing Education Department programs are transferred to other agencies, those programs could continue without being closed or drastically cut. But Trump and Project 2025 have articulated a set of plans that do make radical changes. Trump has said he supports a federal voucher – or a “universal school choice” – plan, likely funded through federal tax credits. This idea is set forth in the proposed Educational Choice for Children Act, which is backed by Project 2025. Perhaps tellingly, Trump’s announcement of the McMahon nomination highlighted school-choice goals; it did not mention abolishing the department.
President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, right, listens as 25th Administrator of the US Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, left, speaks during a press conference in Swannanoa, North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The Washington Post via Getty Images
Beyond these initiatives, Trump’s campaign shared his plan to target a variety of culture-war issues. This includes cutting federal funding for any school or program that involves “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.”
What we can expect
My expectation is that the Trump administration’s most likely and immediate changes will be in the form of executive orders that alter how laws will be implemented. For example, Trump may use an executive order to remove protections for transgender students.
Subsequently, I also expect some congressional budgetary changes to education programs. Based on past votes, I expect overwhelming but not universal Republican congressional support for Trump’s educational agenda. Using the budget reconciliation process, which circumvents the filibuster, a majority vote can make changes to revenue or spending. Accordingly, Congress may agree to program cuts and perhaps even to move some programmatic funding into education vouchers for individual parents.
As for closing the Education Department, which probably would not qualify for the reconciliation process, Secretary-designate McMahon may find that takedown to be a politically difficult one to achieve.
I know you have little appetite for reading about the inglorious end of the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump. I don’t have much appetite for writing about it at this point. But it needs to be acknowledged for the travesty it is, while trying not to sound melodramatic.
The historic conclusion of Trump’s prosecution for Jan. 6 – and for all practical purposes it is over – is a withering indictment of structural and institutional failures that will haunt us for decades to come. The ignoble end of the Mar-a-Lago prosecution, while similarly confounding, strikes somewhat less directly at the constitutional order.
At this late stage, finger-pointing at the many culprits who share responsibility for this absurd outcome seems inadequate to the long-term challenge of fixing the structural deficiencies and institutional inadequacies that have left the rule of law exposed, vulnerable, and unprotected.
What is required now is the difficult, long-term, low-odds challenge of reimagining a constitutional order that functions as the founders intended, elevating one person from among the people to administer the national government without making them a monarch, potentate, or tyrant.
The problem, of course, is that we must undertake this generational challenge while now confronted with a newly rearranged constitutional order that has brought us closer than ever before to having precisely the kind of ruler the founders most feared and warned of.
It’s not an undertaking for the faint of heart.
For The Record
The relevant documents are short and to the point:
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Motion to Dismiss the Jan. 6 Case against Donald Trump
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Opinion granting Smith’s Motion to Dismiss
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Motion to Dismiss the Mar-a-Lago appeal as to Donald Trump
Reactions To The Dismissal Of Trump’s Federal Cases
“The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.” –Charlie Savage
“But let’s be real: It’s over. If you have to say the words “equitable tolling” in describing a vision of presidential accountability, you’re not really talking about presidential accountability. You’re talking about a fantasy. You’re lighting votive candles with pictures of prosecutors.”–Benjamin Wittes
“It is hard to escape the grim conclusion: No president out of office has done more to grow the power of the presidency than Donald Trump. And the fact that this strengthening of the office is the result of his misdeeds, and empowers the president to undertake further misdeeds with impunity, is profoundly disturbing.”–Kim Wehle
Kicker Of The Day
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 6: Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. – Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
NBC News concludes its story on the dismissal of the Jan. 6 case against Trump with this gut punch: “He is expected to walk through the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of Jan. 6 took place, to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2025.”
Look Who Passed Trump’s Litmus Test
Trump has picked more than a dozen people for key roles in his new administration who showed up to support him in court during his hush money trial, the NYT reports.
What Was Boris Epshteyn Up To?
Morning Memo is likely to return to this story, but in the meantime, be careful about which bucket you put it in. A close adviser to President-elect Trump allegedly seeking pay-to-play arrangements epitomizes the kind of corruption that has always swirled around Trump and is likely to continue on steroids in his second term. Self-dealing by Boris Epshteyn seems to be what’s alleged, but I’m not sure that context alone is sufficient to capture the full mix of internal power struggles, back-stabbing, and perhaps even worse levels of corruption. It’s telling that the news of the internal Trump investigation first emerged at John Solomon’s right-wing Just the News and included a Trump interview. Don’t get me wrong, whatever bucket or buckets it belongs in is BAD. But the precise contours of this alleged episode, and its full dimensions, are still unclear.
RFK Jr. Accuser Comes Forward
A woman who worked in the late 1990s as an intern in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s office and as a babysitter for his family has spoken to the WSJ and is willing to testify to the Senate about her sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Headline Of The Day
Public Notice: “A government by toxic men, for toxic men”
Trump Transition Miscellany
Tariffs: “The major question is whether the threats are a negotiating ploy to wring concessions on trade and other policy priorities from U.S. trading partners, or the start of a sustained campaign to reshape global trade and the American economy.”–WSJ
Deportations: “Tom Homan, President-elect Donald Trump’s new ‘border czar,’ has warned states that refuse to ‘cooperate’ with mass deportation plans may face having their federal funding slashed.”–HuffPost
Taxes: “Republicans are trying to fit as many priorities as possible into one bill early next year, combining tax cuts, spending cuts, energy policy, border security and President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises.”–WSJ
It’s Come To This …
You might find yourself reluctantly rooting for no-longer-leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to curb the worst excesses of Trump on Ukraine and executive power:
Mr. McConnell, whose current term ends in 2027 and who has not said whether he will seek another, has said he plans to focus intently during the next two years on advancing his interventionist strain of foreign policy, which flies in the face of the president-elect’s “America First” approach. He also wants to concentrate on preserving the Senate’s institutional independence at a time when Mr. Trump, who will have a governing trifecta in January, has made clear that he means to bend the chamber to his will.
Good Read
WSJ: Christopher Rufo Has Trump’s Ear and Wants to End DEI for Good
Boebert On Cameo
House ethics rules prohibit profiting off your office, but you do you, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
State Judge Upholds Missouri Ban On Gender-Affirming Care
“A Missouri circuit court judge on Monday declined to restore access to gender-affirming care for minors in the state, ruling in a 74-page judgment that a law banning children from accessing medical care is constitutional.”–HuffPost
A Civilized Way To Travel
PHILADELPHIA, PA- JULY 10, 2014: The SS United States can be seen for miles as one drives toward South Philadelphia. The SS United States, which is slowly rusting away in Philadelphia, has been the target of numerous “save our ship” schemes, all of which have failed. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
After I mentioned in yesterday’s Morning Memo the imminent demise of the SS United States, I heard from a couple of readers about their youthful experiences as passengers aboard the ship, back when she made regular transatlantic crossings:
MM Reader MA:
I took the USSS from France to NYC in 1961. I have a cup with its photo. It was very fast and so very bumpy, but a kind steward got me outside in the wind and cajoled me into thinking I could do it.
TPM Reader SB:
My family sailed back from Southampton on the SS United States in September of 1966. I was 11. We went through a hurricane along the way and they put ropes up along the gangways to give folks something to hold onto as they walked around. The ship rolled a crazy amount (to my eyes) but everyone just dealt with it. There were no roll stabilizers on those liners. They would dampen the table cloths in the dining areas so the plates and cups wouldn’t slide. One special evening we ordered Baked Alaska as the desert. What a treat that was! After we were through the brunt of the storm the captain speeded up and the belief was we were doing closer to 40 knots to make up time. The indoor pool had been emptied during the storm but refilled (partially) and the water would slosh back and forth like a modern wave pool. The VW bus we had purchased in Europe came home with us and we drove it off the dock in NYC with all our luggage. Very civilized.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case Friday (FCC v. Consumers’ Research) in which an advocacy group describing itself as an adversary to “woke” corporations wants the right-wing justices to escalate their hostility to federal agencies.
A perennial feature of Trumpism is that Trump is constantly launching threats and shiny objects of all sorts. Some of those he’ll follow through on; most he won’t. They all put opponents back on their heels. And that is, of course, the point. Trump lets it all ride and acts on what seems to serve his interests in the moment. Or maybe he doesn’t. That’s also the point. He’s the actor; his opponents are the reactors.
That spurs a knock-on feature of Trumpism. His opponents are among the biggest proponents of the seriousness of his threats. We’ll come back to that.
Polls have come out in the days since the election showing clear majorities favoring Trump’s “mass deportation” plans. Or at least they seem to. One I saw over the weekend asked if respondents supported Trump’s plan start “a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.” 57% of respondents to a CBS/YouGov poll said they supported that. But let’s note that this is already U.S. government policy. There is a question of what’s prioritized, just what lengths the government goes to to find people. But the question in the poll described what is actually current policy. When asked how he plans to start “mass deportation,” incoming “Border Czar” Tom Homan says they’ll focus first on criminals and terrorist undocumented immigrants. Well, that is especially current U.S. policy.
