In Ancient Rome, to enforce discipline among its military, commanders often would order “decimation,” which was the practice of killing one out of every ten soldiers among the ranks. While international laws prevent such barbaric rituals within modern militaries, the phrase “decimate” lives on as it filtered from the original Latin to modern English where Merriam-Webster defines it as “to kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage…”
This past week, Education Secretary Linda McMahon decimated her department by announcing the layoffs of roughly half of its very anxious personnel! The move came as little surprise when considering that Project 2025, the MAGA Manifesto from the Heritage Foundation that serves as the blueprint for the Second Trump administration, waxed at length about the desire to eliminate the Federal Department of Education (DOE) so as to “return the power of educating to the states and local communities.”
The problem with this position, one that has been repeated ad nauseam by Trump and every single Republican president since Ronald Reagan, is that the governing of education policy ALWAYS has rested with the individual states and local school boards! Sadly, as we exist in the “Disinformation Age,” this simple truth has been lost among two types of voters—those who are too willfully blind to see or understand DOE’s importance, and those who understand its importance just fine, but have been conditioned to believe that “East Coast liberal elites” and “unqualified racial minorities” are the primary beneficiaries of federal educational programs.
To be clear, on the federal level, DOE has been crucial in, 1. Gathering data on the efficacy of educational initiatives as reported by the individual states; 2. Ensuring that federal laws governing educational civil rights are fully enforced; 3. Ensuring that block grants to state and local school districts, as well as individual student loans and aid at the collegiate and graduate/professional school levels, are processed and timely distributed.
Nowhere in the preceding paragraph did you read that the fundamental purpose of DOE is to indoctrinate students into “woke” ideology about race, gender, or sexual orientation! But this lie is told time and again by President Donald Trump, his consul, the unelected Elon Musk, along with cabinet secretaries and MAGA congressional leaders who show up on Fox “News” each week to bamboozle their followers who watch, listen, and obey by refusing to question the veracity of what’s being fed to them through the television.
The attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, much like prior attacks on Critical Race Theory and Affirmative Action, are ways in which conservatives appeal to lower class and uneducated white voters who foolishly believe that their upward financial trajectories are stunted by undeserving Black and Brown students and alumni…
Not surprisingly, when the dust settled from this week’s decimation, the areas hardest hit were jobs within DOE’s Federal Student Aid Office and the Office for Civil Rights! Ironically, the same day that the layoffs were announced, I talked for over an hour with one of my oldest friends who is a staff attorney within the Office of Civil Rights who told me that his branch office had been placed on notice of pending cuts the previous week; later that evening, he sent me a text message that he had just received an email stating that his job was preserved—but that a great many of his colleagues were not so lucky.
One prevailing theme during Trump’s first 100 days has been the removal of lawyers within the individual branches of the military, the Department of Defense, and now, DOE. Why? Well, allow me to remind you of William Shakespeare’s famous line, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” from Henry VI and how from post-medieval times to the present day, the legal profession has been designed to serve as the sword and shield that protect the public from tyranny. But if the lawyers who see wrong and are willing to redress it are removed—or if those lawyers who remain find their hands tied by the ideological whims of their departmental leaders— such sets the stage for tyranny in its WORST forms!
Indeed, with this week’s decimation at DOE, it is crystal clear that the Trump administration knows that it cannot eliminate the department as that decision rests strictly with Congress, but they can destroy it by defunding and eliminating essential workers in the name of “efficiency.” As a result, the department essentially dies slowly as litigants with legitimate gripes about special education and 504 accomodations per the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will find themselves unable to reach a living, breathing person at DOE to help guide them through the morass! And you KNOW that things are bad when THE Secretary of DOE, Ms. McMahon, takes to Fox “News” and openly admits that she doesn’t even know what the IDEA acronym stands for :
Separately, but equally impactful, will be those college and graduate/professional school students who will soon find that their financial aid hasn’t dropped on time…if at all…thus, compelling many to have to take fewer classes—or drop out of school altogether!
I could see this last piece, the drying up of higher education financial aid, coming a LONG time ago whenever I would listen to famous college dropouts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck wax on and on about how they had to work two or three jobs to pay for classes and whatnot while little spoiled kids—and racial minorities—went to school off of the government’s dime.
The problem with those conservative blowhards gripe, and the millions of their non-college educated groupies who form the majority of the MAGA base, is that higher education has ALWAYS been the key to enlightenment, first, and upward mobility, second, in any capitalist society. Which is why the removal of funding for education, and the elimination of enforcement mechanisms which ensure compliance with federal laws for those being educated, is precisely what those who seek to destroy democracy in favor of authoritarian rule desire—an ignorant group of sheep who only listen to words dictated by their shepherd.
Lest we forget…
