EDUKAYSHUN: President Trump, who once said he loves the uneducated, yesterday signed an order to dismantle the federal Department of Education which has long been a target of conservatives.

  The order with the Orwellian title “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities” says “the unaccountable bureaucracy” of the Education Department “has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.” 

  His order cites deficiencies in math and reading scores, which some analysts attribute in part to school closures during the covid pandemic.

  Trump signed the order in the East Room of the White House surrounded by children sitting at little desks and also in the presence of conservative activists, influencers, and Republican governors, from Florida, Texas, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa.

  Before signing Trump asked a couple of the children, “Should I do this?” 

  The Department of Education as it exists does not control local schools. It helps local school districts with things like special education and a large part of its function is to administer loans for college and graduate schools. But conservatives have bristled at progressive agendas around education as well as standards and inclusive policies for LGBTQ students. Opponents have said these policies undermine parental rights and values.

  Only Congress can officially close the Education Department, but Trump has the power to empty the building. Polls in the past month have shown that roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closure of the department.

  Ironically at a time when Trump is slashing federal employment, his order notes that while the Education Department’s student loan portfolio is about the size of Wells Fargo Bank with 200,000 employees, the Education Department has only 1,500. The order says, “The Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.” Presumably, more employees.

SECRETS AND LIES: Federal Judge James Boasberg in Washington is edging closer to holding administration officers in contempt for withholding information about the flights that took suspected Venezuelan gang members from the US to prison in El Salvador.

  Administration lawyers have been stonewalling and Boasberg called their explanations “woefully insufficient.”

  Boasberg is demanding to know how and why two flights full of deportees already in the air to El Salvador did not obey his order to turn around and come back. A third flight took off after Boasberg issued both verbal and written orders to stop the deportations.

 Government lawyers have claimed national security privilege but failed to produce evidence of that coming from anyone in a cabinet level position. Boasberg ordered that by today the lawyers must  “submit a sworn declaration by a person with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.” 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is expected today to be briefed on Pentagon plans for any potential war with China, The NY Times reports. Although he has no official or appointed position with the government, Musk is being allowed deeper and deeper into the works.

  The briefing presents a serious conflict of interest, which Musk already has as President Trump’s chief cost-cutter. The billionaire chief of both SpaceX and Tesla, has lucrative contracts with the Pentagon and financial interests in China.

— A federal judge in Maryland temporarily barred the Social Security Administration from granting Elon Musk and members of his Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer records in the agency’s systems and from retaining  sensitive data they’ve already taken.

  Judge Ellen Hollander’s order prevents the Musk team from looking at individual records but allows the examination of broader sets of data that would not violate privacy. 

— The federal government is ending the long-standing tradition of allowing Canadians to enter through the door on the American side of the Haskell Free Library & Opera House that sits astride the US-Quebec border at Derby Line, Vermont. Access by Canadians without having to go through customs has been an assumption of US-Canadian friendship.

THE WAR ROOM:  Russia carried out a major drone strike overnight on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, hitting civilian infrastructure, and setting off a massive fire. Peace talks to end the war are scheduled to resume Monday in Saudi Arabia. 

HOOP DREAMS: The Boston Celtics basketball franchise has been sold for $6.1 billion, the biggest price ever for an American sports team. The buyer is Bill Chisholm, a relative unknown, the managing partner of Symphony Technology Group.

  The champion Celtics are already paying the league’s “luxury tax” for exceeding their player salary allowance. One of the minority owners, who seemed to be speaking for a bunch of swells with extra change in their pockets said, “luxury taxes be damned.”

THE SPIN RACK: England’s busy Heathrow airport is expected to be closed until at least midnight local time following a fire at an electrical substation that knocked out power. The closure affects travel from all over the world. — The National Transportation Safety Board says that dozens of bridges around the country, including San Francisco’s Golden Gate, are due for an assessment on whether they would survive a ship collision like the one that collapsed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. — The Delta Airlines plane that flipped over on landing in Toronto last month was descending at a high rate of speed, according to the initial investigation. The right landing gear collapsed. — Fifteen-year-old New Zealand runner Sam Ruthe became the youngest person ever to run a mile in less than four minutes. 

BELOW THE FOLD: “This is why I hate liberals. It’s like liberals have no teeth, whatsoever,” the usually foul-mouth comedian Bill Burr said on ABC’s The View. “They just go, ‘Oh my God! Can you believe it? I’m getting out of the country!’ You’re going to leave the country ’cause of one guy with dyed hair plugs and a laminated face who makes a bad car and has an obsolete social media platform?”

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