Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Of Government

Weingarten: It’s really only the Congress that can abolish the Department of Education. So, what the president can do is make government basically ineffective—not work—by a thousand cuts. And that’s what they’re doing. So, if you essentially fire the entire staff, or 80% of the… pic.twitter.com/nO2bYEE6En

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 8, 2025

It’s really only the Congress that can abolish the Department of Education. So, what the president can do is make government basically ineffective—not work—by a thousand cuts. And that’s what they’re doing. So, if you essentially fire the entire staff, or 80% of the staff, of Social Security, and somebody needs to get a Social Security card, they’re not going to be able to get it in a timely way. If you fire everybody who’s doing hurricane watch, you’re not going to have hurricane watch…

The same is true in terms of education. If you fire everybody, or you make it unfeasible for it to work, then none of the laws that are supposed to be effectuated by the department will work. So, if Title I is supposed to go to a high school in Staten Island, and they’re supposed to get $5 million that goes there, and all of a sudden it doesn’t, and they don’t have the money, then that means the programs go away. That means the reading programs, the computer programs, the after-school programs—all the programs that are funded by Title I, and every schoolteacher in America understands what that means—they go away. The same goes for the programs for kids with disabilities under IDEA. If a school system, or a school—because these things go directly to schools—if the funding goes away, a kid doesn’t get physical therapy or occupational therapy

Except those funds are mandated by Congress, and specifically authorized to be paid out by agencies overseen by the SOE. It may be historically impossible to remove Presidents, but I’m pretty sure we can remove Cabinet Secretaries.

What Congress has authorized, the POTUS doesn’t get to de-authorize. Alito and the Katzenjammer kids were presented with a procedural issue which the tried to turn on a spurious representation of possible fraud. The procedural issue here, if presented, could be the same, but the substantive issue turns on Article I. And you have to rip that out by the roots to get to the point where Trump can’t just stop Congressional allocations by laying off government workers.

I think the implosion of Social Security is going to thwart Trump’s efforts to make government “efficient” long before DOE stops functioning. But none of this is going to pay for the tax cuts he wants; nor is it going to win friends and influence people. Except to influence them to tell their representatives to stop whatever it is Trump’s doing.

I would note even deep red Oklahoma wants to keep its federal offices:

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) announced that three federal offices in Oklahoma, including the National Weather Center, will not be terminated after conversations with President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, Cole said that after speaking with the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, the National Weather Center in Norman, the Social Security Administration office in Lawton and the Indian Health Service office in Oklahoma City will remain operational in Oklahoma.

Now tell schools (and state legislators) federal grants for schools are no more; student loans for college are gone; civil rights protections for students, and access to education for special needs students, have stopped, because: DOGE.

Yeah, no parent or teaching legislator will mind that….

Shit definitely gonna get worse, before it gets better.