OK Dale, you sorta win. Before we get to the main event. Drinks on us next week! Most of us could use one. Tuesday, Feb 18th, live recording of Wonkyfolk in Washington, D.C. Crimson Whiskey Bar. Food and apps. Jed Wallace and I will discuss the pending – and potentially quite consequential -SCOTUS case on religion … Continue reading "Hard Truths"
Before we get to the main event. Drinks on us next week! Most of us could use one. Tuesday, Feb 18th, live recording of Wonkyfolk in Washington, D.C. Crimson Whiskey Bar. Food and apps. Jed Wallace and I will discuss the pending – and potentially quite consequential -SCOTUS case on religion and charter schools as well as the chaos in DC and what happens when DOGEs catch cars. Details and RSVP here.
ICYMI – deep dive on DOGE and IES:
A confirmation hearing that wasn’t even American spicy.
Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing to be United States Secretary of Education was pretty uneventful. Surprisingly so given everything going on. The one viral clip was a back and forth with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. Watch the whole exchange and draw your own conclusions, not just the excerpts or secondhand accounts. She could have handled it better and more precisely, even while not committing to hypotheticals. Neither the left nor the right really wants to forthrightly throw their crazy off or under the bus.
NH Senator Hassan’s line about an elegant gaslighting was pretty good, but won’t matter. Tim Kaine got McMahon to commit to not slow walking some student loan programs, but that’s a hard commitment to enforce. Like beauty, slow walking is in the eye of the beholder. The biggest oppo dump was that McMahon owns a bunch of municipal bonds. Yawn.
If I knew anything about professional wrestling, I guess I’d be a little excited that “Triple H” was sitting behind McMahon during the hearing. But I don’t, and am not.
Basically, the Dems failed to get the gloves on her, the Rs mostly gave off big “protect funding for my state” and phoning it in energy (Lisa Murkowski being a noteworthy exception). Cool the first question, from Chairman Cassidy, was about dyslexia. Actual issue! A lot of agreement on CTE, that could be bipartisan when things quiet down. McMahon name-checked CT-based education leader Dacia Toll! (Who is a gem). A bit of street theater as some protesting teachers yelling about being public school graduates were removed by Capitol Police. I’d suggest, as a public school graduate and parent incidentally, that when we’re in this mess in no small part because people think we’re not serious, it’s not a great time to put unserious on parade. Could have been a small Sister Souljah move for a Dem senator to say, hey, knock it off have a little respect here.
This 74 account covers it all well. McMahon said she wasn’t interested in cutting spending on core programs. OK. But the hearing was happening the same day as, just across the street, the House Budget Committee was marking up a budget resolution that could lead to cuts. Bear in mind, it’s not difficult for a cabinet secretary to come back to the Hill and say, well, circumstances have changed. But if you want a sense of the agenda, here via 74:
Trump was not a big budget cutter his first term, the opposite actually, so he’d probably trade money for these priorities.
She did say a few noteworthy things. She’ll continue spending on Congressionally mandated items and she will come to Congress with a Department restructuring plan. This puts her at odds with other figures in the Administration who believe the President has the authority to do this absent Congressional consent.
You can do more restructuring legally by Executive Order (EO) and other actions than some people seem to realize, especially given how the Department has evolved. The guardrails are also fuzzier and some Republicans feel empowered to push boundaries post-student loan jubilee, too. Great work everyone. But most people agree you can’t do this entirely without Congress.
As we discussed earlier this week this nomination would have been a layup a few weeks ago. Still, given everything that’s happened on education since then (EOs, DOGE, even some announced sub-cabinet appointments) it was less spicy than one might have expected. If you’re a Democrat, no point voting for her now. If you’re a Republican, no point voting against. From a craft standpoint she did exactly what she needed to and was well-prepared, a contrast to 2017. (In 2017 there was an amusing scramble as Trump people tried to get the word out that they had not been involved in DeVos prep or otherwise distance themselves.)
Bottom line: Based on her record and what she’s said, take them quite seriously, but not literally, on abolishing the department. Expect a sort of DOGE, Art of the Deal, government reform mash-up.
Everything is going to the DOGEs
But for now, education is being thrown to the DOGEs even as some of this is less than advertised. Chad Aldeman looks at some of that in this useful post suggesting there are less IES cuts than advertised. But I would say the takeaway here is that DOGE is not well-planned or executed, not that consequential cuts were not made. We talked about that earlier this week, and people in research shops say layoffs are coming as a result.
Stuart Buck takes a look at the illogic of all of it.
More generally there are reasons to be skeptical of broad DOGE claims. Even Republicans aren’t buying:
Meanwhile there are layoffs happening at main ED as well as other agencies.
It’s worth noting that in the announcement on the cuts to regional education laboratory contracts the Department said they would be re-contracted under new terms.
Privately, a lot of Trump people are quite exasperated with DOGE recognizing the political and substantive headwinds this approach is creating.
A couple of hard realities.
Outside of some data access issues that are now in court, what’s going on in education is about policy disagreements not legality, no matter how strongly you may feel. That’s not the case across the whole of government, particularly at the Department of Justice. We should be careful not to conflate bad policy, which people disagree about, with illegal policy, which courts decide. It’s entirely possible for you to consider a policy bad, and legal. That would be my take on IES, for instance, as I told Newsweek.
Conversely, some people might consider a policy or policy action good, even if it’s not legal. That’s what is being tested at DOJ this week, and especially today. I’d urge you to read this letter, and also this one, with a few things in mind. First, I don’t want to trivialize the importance of what’s happening around IES and the Department, but let’s not get main character syndrome around here. What’s happening at DOJ is far more consequential. We’re having a disagreement about the structure and role of a federal agency, they’re testing fundamental norms and ideas about how our federal legal system works.
Which is my second point. We’re about to get a rough lesson in just how stupid many of our disagreements have been as we’ve gently boiled like frogs to this point. The attorneys fighting back at DOJ are Federalist Society members, former clerks for Justices Scalia, Roberts, and Kavanaugh. I surely would disagree with them on many things but their commitment to the rule of law or our way of life is not in question. We disagree, ok but they’re not the enemy. If you made them so. Or, conversely, if you just want to “own the libs” regardless of the norm you’re trashing, then you’re part of the problem. The real divides among us are not R and D, or left and right. The divide is: who is committed to liberal order and who isn’t. And that, my friends, transcends partisan lines. It’s a shame it’s taken this to surface how illiberalism doesn’t respect partisan lines nor, thankfully, does integrity, bravery, or good faith.
About the Department of Education, the basic throwaway line is, ‘well, how could it be worse?’ And while neither Miguel Cardona nor Betsy DeVos bathed themselves in glory, FAFSA was an appalling and consequential failure, the learning loss debacle, etc…that’s wrong. It can be worse. A lot.
For instance, the department has important roles around civil rights, special education, and sending funding where it’s most needed given the widespread dysfunction of how we fund schools. In addition to protecting rights, at its best it plays a key role in catalyzing opportunity. All of this could be reformed and improved, but just farming them out, or eliminating them, is not a reform or a strategy. Left to their own devices that’s what the DOGE crew and some in the government would do. It’s shortsighted.
Yes, everyone resisting reform *always* says they *really* do want reform but then argue any and every specific proposed reform will have perverse consequences (A.O. Hirschman wrote a whole book about it), I do think in this case there is some truth to the reform, yes, just not this way, argument. I’ve heard from plenty of people in the research world, for instance, in and out of government, who sincerely agree with Mark Schneider on the need for comprehensive reform, but are not on board with how that’s happening now. (And some who are, it should be noted, because they think this is the only way as Mark argued). Many people were calling for reform pre-DOGE, so this isn’t some sort of deathbed conversion.
Here’s Christine Pitts in her great newsletter:
Overall, there are plenty of people, including many Democrats, quite open to big reforms and restructuring at the Department and IES. But they want it done with care and a keen eye toward better services for young people and the traditional federal role in looking after underserved populations. ESSA has already taught us how uneven things can be absent that federal role pushing for equity (as we used to define it, equality of opportunity in education, before the term got bowdlerized this past decade). And ideally done with Congress so it’s more durable.
So, second, all the chaos means that at this point, counterintuitively, it’s in the education community’s best interest to see McMahon and the senior team at education, particularly Schwinn and Baesler confirmed in their roles as soon as possible. Not because you agree with them or they are who you would chose (reminder, the election is over) but rather to get some handle on things. The West Wing staff, DOGE, and the Department are not on the same page.
The West Wing staff are highly ideological and looking to do attention grabbing stunts like their pending EO on shuttering the Department that some Senate Republicans and McMahon’s team have been fighting off. Trump, for his part, loves political spectacle so that’s the incentive. DOGE is off the rails.
Going forward, expect political warfare and rear guard actions between the West Wing and the Department. At least until Trump loses interest and moves on. Or his interest is forced elsewhere.
Having a confirmed Secretary isn’t a muzzle for DOGE or insurance against various EOs, as we’re seeing. But it matters and as opposed to some other agency heads, McMahon knows how the federal government works.
There are people who hope it all goes off a cliff just to make a point about Trump. I’m not sure how that makes you any different than the chaos monkeys rampaging through these agencies. If you believe the Department matters, you should want adult leadership in place as soon as possible even if it’s not your preferred adults or you won’t like many of the decisions.
In other words, right now whether you like her or not (no opinion), whether you like it or not (I don’t), Linda McMahon is now the limiting principle in our part of the world.
Good luck Madam Secretary. You’ll need it.
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