When President Jimmy Carter broke his 1976 campaign pledge by adding another Cabinet-level department to the federal roster, he swore that a “separate Cabinet-level department will enable the Federal government to be a true partner with State, local, and private education institutions in sustaining and improving the quality of our education system.”
On March 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at shutting down Carter’s Department of Education, fulfilling his campaign promise to reduce federal involvement in education.
This was popular because everybody who’s not a bureaucrat or a teachers’ union agent knows that federal involvement in schooling, since Carter’s time, has been, not just a waste, but a detriment.
Still, teacher union-dominated Democrats are swiping at the administration with numerous lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s layoffs and transfers, ruling that they amounted to an unlawful attempt to dismantle the department without congressional approval.
Earlier this month, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Joun’s injunction, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to pause the order while appealing.
Two days later, the Trump administration, through Solicitor General D. John Sauer, filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The plea? Lift the injunction and allow the layoffs and reorganization to proceed. Trump’s team argued that the lower court had overstepped its authority and that the layoffs were a lawful personnel action to streamline the department, not an attempt to abolish it without Congress.
The injunction sent DOE functionaries back to work. Nothing’s been resolved.
Not even the rationales for Carter’s “greatest achievement” (to quote the title of a USA Today op-ed). Carter had promised to reduce the number of departments, for efficiency’s sake. When creating the DOE, he said the move would increase efficiency.
Instead, it merely increased education spending while academic achievement has plummeted.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
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