Tarred With the Same Brush
No Scalpel Necessary
From a Google Image Search - The Boston Globe
It’s easy to govern if you just lump groups of people into one category and write new laws without Congress by issuing decrees (executive actions), but governing in this fashion makes little reference to the contents of our constitution. Congress gets ignored or simply ordered to do what the president wishes it to do. Congress, the part of our government intended to represent we the people, becomes a body with no power and no purpose. Mike Johnson sends Congress home for long periods of time, but these adjournments are repurposed from obstruction to exploitation.
Trump, his Project 2025 cohorts and his oligarchs don’t have to use a scalpel to make cuts. They have an overwhelming mandate to cut anything that treats citizens as individuals, anything that punishes colleges and universities for daring to express opinions contrary to conservative ideology (Gaza/Israel), or where students refused to accept conservative speakers. They pass laws to punish Democrats for trying to level the playing field through DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) because they espouse a theory that says there is no racism and any attempts to address it are hurting white Americans. In fact, if you believe America is racist then you don’t love America.
The newest executive actions that propose changes to the Department of Education reinforce attacks on programs that address DEI but also attacks on women and the programs women pursue in higher education (perhaps satisfying a misogyny based on a Biblical argument that men should dominate and women should be submissive). I’m sorry to use AI as a source again but it seems impossible to ignore it right there at the top of the search engine results.
The Department of Education is not closed but projects and programs are being moved to other departments by Executive Action.
Department of Labor:
K-12 and post-secondary grant programs including $18m Title 1 programing which supports schools with low-income students
Teacher training
English language instruction
TRIO program which helps low-income students get into college.
(I’m sure you see the pattern. These are DEI programs or programs affecting mostly women. The pattern continues in the projected movement of other projects and programs, and adds in any connections between American schools and foreign schools - America First?)
Department of Health and Human Services:
Management of grant programs for college students who are parents
Oversight of foreign medical school accreditations.
Department of State:
Oversee foreign language and international programs under Fulbright-Hays Grants
Department of the Interior:
Oversee programs for Native American Education
Department of Justice:
Office for Civil Rights enforcement duties may move here. Right now, it is in the Education Department with reduced staff.
Projects and Initiatives cancelled:
Magnet Schools assistance
TRIO Program
Research contracts:
89 contracts worth $881m related to education research and statistics which impacts the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Center for Education Statistics (Erases oversight.)
DEI training grants:
29 training grants totaling $101m focused on DEI were ended.
The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Tech Assistance - a center that provided resources for schools to prepare for emergencies like active shooters and cyberattacks was shut down. (These notes were paraphrased from AI.)
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-degrees-professional-trump-administration-11085695
“Students doing certain degrees may no longer receive the same amount of reimbursement for their studies now that the Department of Education is implementing various measures from President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
One measure coming into action is that whether a degree is considered “professional” will influence how much reimbursement a student receives for their higher education.
List of Degrees Not Classed as ‘Professional’ by Trump Admin
· Nursing
· Physician assistants
· Physical therapists
· Audiologists
· Architects
· Accountants
· Educators
· Social workers
The new measures will be implemented from July 2026.
Nurses have already been weighing in on this and they are not happy, but educators haven’t said much yet. Many of these workers are women, but now even men who enter these fields will be tarred with the same brush.
“The Trump administration says limits on graduate loans are needed to reduce tuition costs. It believes that capping student loans will push universities charging higher-than-average tuition to look at lowering rates.”
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission. As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools – ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”
Again, Rachel Maddow gave us the definitive statement on this. “Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.” It’s not all about government cost-cutting and forcing colleges to lower costs, it’s about getting rid of “wokeness,” now called DEI, in government and in society. And it’s about sending a message that America will no longer take care of low-income citizens or citizens of color, as Trump and friends now declare that there is no racism or discrimination of any kind in America.
Travel Bans
Then there is that sad thing that happened on Thanksgiving when two National Guard soldiers working in DC, were shot and one 20-year-old woman is dead. The soldiers were there because Trump says the city is out-of-control. They were shot by a person we granted asylum to, because he helped our side in Afghanistan. I don’t have any idea why he did this terrible thing. Maybe he thought having the National Guard in DC was like having the Taliban in Kabul. He is not dead. Perhaps he will explain why he did it. Although no explanation will suffice, we always want to understand why.
Trump’s reaction is to ban all entry to America for anyone from Afghanistan, and he added a few other countries he has wanted to ban for some time.
“After an Afghan national was named as being behind a shooting in Washington, D.C., that left one member of the National Guard dead .and another in critical condition, President Trump vowed a sharp crackdown on immigration from countries he described as “third world.”
Writing on social media on Thursday night, Trump railed against immigrants from impoverished nations, accusing them of being a burden on the nation’s welfare system and “preying” on natural-born citizens.
“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover,” he wrote on Truth Social.“
See, it’s easy when everyone in a certain class of people is tarred with the same brush. They all must go. No immigrants. Democrats too must go. No more liberals, socialists, communists. Far fewer college graduates. Everyone gets a certificate. No environmental adjustments. No oversight. Who/what will be left? This isn’t even an exhaustive list.
We still don’t have the Epstein files.