Jackie Robinson

Dear Commons Community,

Leonard Greene had an op-ed in The New York Daily News yesterday commenting on last- week’s disclosure that baseball icon, Jackie Robinson, had his U.S. Army record erased from a military website. While it has since be reinstated, it exposed Trump and his racist cronies for what they are. Below is an excerpt from the op-ed.  It speaks volumes.

Tony

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Before Rosa Parks changed history by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Alabama bus, a righteous Black Army lieutenant was court-martialed for taking the same stand in Texas.

His name: Jackie Robinson.

Robinson is best known, of course, for breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

But on July 6, 1944, Robinson (photo) refused a driver’s order to move to the back of an Army bus.

Although he was acquitted of the six counts against him, including insubordination, the court-martial prevented him from deploying to fight in Europe with his battalion. He received an honorable discharge.

Last week, Robinson, dead for 54 years, suffered another injustice when his Army record was wiped from a military website in a racist and regressive DEI purge.

The erasure followed with President Trump’s order to the Pentagon to scan federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos to remove any web pages that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”

An article detailing Robinson’s military career has since been restored, but the damage was already done.

“We take great pride in Jackie Robinson’s service to our country as a soldier and a sports hero, an icon whose courage, talent, strength of character and dedication contributed greatly to leveling the playing field not only in professional sports but throughout society,” Robinson’s son David Robinson, a Jackie Robinson Foundation board member, said in a statement.

“A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he of course is an American hero.”

Removing Robinson’s record puts Trump in the same company with every white ballplayer who ever threw at, spit at or spiked Robinson because they didn’t want to play with or against a Black ballplayer.

He’s as bad as any parent at a game who called Robinson a n—-r in front of their children, or motel manager who wouldn’t rent Robinson a room on the road.

It’s the most insulting anti-woke move since Florida banned some books with titles about Parks, Henry Aaron and Roberto Clemente.

Among the problems with the DEI attacks and the backlash against affirmative action is the assumption that Black success has been based on racial preference and not hard work and merit.

The reality, though, is that our success has often come in spite of being Black — not because of it.

The Rev. Al Sharpton recalled meeting Robinson as a youth when his mentor, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, brought Sharpton and his mother to a fundraiser at Robinson’s Connecticut home.

“My mother felt like she was in the presence of somebody immortal,” Sharpton said on MSNBC. “That’s who Jackie Robinson was. To take him down in the name of DEI?

“He didn’t get where he got because they had some kind of diversity program. He merited that. And it’s the most racist thing in the world to act like these people who put their lives on the line in the military only got there because somebody did something extra for them. No. They earned it.”

Robinson wasn’t the only former soldier wiped off a military website. The Department of Defense also erased a page honoring Vietnam War hero Charles Calvin Rogers, a Black U.S. Army general and Medal of Honor recipient.

This was after Trump fired CQ Brown Jr., a Black four-star Air Force general, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and replaced him with a retired white three-star general.

Brown had been a supporter of diversity initiatives.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called Robinson “a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”

Still, Robinson, a Republican, endorsed Richard Nixon for president in 1960 before becoming disillusioned with the GOP.

“A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP,” Robinson later said. “It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind — the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.”

Dear Commons Community,

A case, FCC v. Consumers’ Research, will be heard on Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court that threatens federal funding for the Universal Service Fund (USF) which includes the popular E-Rate program for libraries and schools. E-Rate is the commonly used name for the Schools and Libraries Program of the USF, which is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) under the direction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The program provides discounts to assist schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications and internet access. It is one of four support programs funded through a universal service fee charged to companies that provide interstate and/or international telecommunications services.  Below is an excerpt of an article published by CNN that reviews the current status of the case.

Tony

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When schools in Kentucky closed for several days last month due to severe flooding, students suddenly began showing up at the Bullitt County Public Library.

They had come for the internet.

To pay for those high-speed connections that some students lacked at home, the county library – like many others across the country – has relied on a federal program that is now poised for a major overhaul courtesy of the Supreme Court.

“Internet access is a luxury,” said Tara O’Hagan, the library’s executive director. “In Bullitt County, there’s literally a digital divide.”

The case, which the justices will hear on Wednesday, could wind up costing libraries, schools and hospitals billions.

At a time when nearly 10% of US households do not have access to broadband internet, one of the leading programs to bridge the divide has been caught up in a broader and decades old separation-of-powers fight over federal agencies. Those cases have found purchase on the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, which has repeatedly limited the ability of the federal bureaucracy to act absent congressional approval.

A conservative “consumer awareness group” is challenging the $7 billion Universal Service Fund, which Congress created in 1996 to offset the cost of phone and internet service for low-income Americans.

It’s a system that critics say is a “bureaucrat’s dream” and a “nightmare for the Constitution.”

To pay for programs like E-Rate, which O’Hagan’s library relies on, Congress requires telecommunications companies to chip billions of dollars into the fund, a cost that is usually passed on to customers. Critics say the system is an indirect tax levied by the Federal Communications Commission and violates what’s known as the nondelegation doctrine – the idea that Congress can’t delegate its power to federal agencies.

Making matters worse, those critics say, the FCC essentially outsources the administration of the fund to a private company.

“Nobody wants to take responsibility for taxes,” said Trent McCotter, an attorney at the Boyden Gray law firm who will argue against the government on Wednesday.

Paying for the program through regular congressional spending bills, McCotter told CNN, would be better for schools and libraries in the long run.

“The Universal Service Fund is facing a widely recognized death spiral of ever-higher rates, with dwindling returns – which will soon implode the program,” he said.

But others say pervasive gridlock on Capitol Hill would jeopardize programs like E-Rate and Lifeline that connect millions of Americans to the internet.

“The impact would be most pronounced and quickest on low-income folks,” said John Heitmann, counsel for the National Lifeline Association, a group that represents companies that connect about 8 million households with phone and internet service subsidized through the fund. “They don’t have the megaphone that corporations have.”

A decision is expected by the end of June.

Curbing the ‘administrative state’

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has in recent years hacked away at the power of federal agencies to act on their own, most recently in a 6-3 decision last year that overturned a 1984 precedent requiring courts to give deference to agency regulations in many circumstances. Federal agency power expanded dramatically after the New Deal, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, and courts had veered too far from exercising independent judgment about whether an agency had violated the law.

That decision came on the heels of a blockbuster ruling in 2022 that embraced the so-called major questions doctrine, which bars an agency from issuing a rule with major economic or political impacts absent explicit approval from Congress.

The “nondelegation doctrine,” which blocks Congress from delegating its authority to agencies – and may also bar agencies from delegating their authority to private entities – is the next target in that campaign.

The high court has not invoked the nondelegation doctrine since the 1930s. It has instead since permitted Congress to delegate authority under certain conditions.

But conservative groups in particular have argued the permissiveness has perverted separation-of-powers principles, allowing government agencies to take the lead on difficult choices they say should be left to elected lawmakers.

That argument has drawn nods of approval from at least four conservative justices.

Many of the recent appeals dealing with the power of federal agencies have taken on a political sheen, with conservative groups challenging policies embraced by the Biden administration – including student loan forgiveness, environmental regulations and Covid-19 restrictions.

But the politics of this case, FCC v. Consumers’ Research, are more complicated.

The Biden administration appealed an adverse ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the Trump administration hasn’t shown any sign of deviating course. The Justice Department warned the court in a brief this month that “Congress has relied on this court’s longstanding” approach to the issue to enact legislation authorizing agencies to police unfair competition, oversee the securities industry and ensure the safety of food and drugs.

Some of the programs funded through the Universal Service Fund have faced controversies and even some of those advocating for them acknowledge that McCotter has a point about the fund’s long-term viability.

Still those advocates are hopeful that President Donald Trump won’t try to undermine the programs, which have a significant impact in rural communities that supported his reelection.

When Trump announced a new FCC commissioner in a social media post in January, he noted that the agency would work to cut regulations, protect free speech and “ensure every American has access to affordable and fast internet.” The remark, though unspecific, was not lost on advocates hoping to bolster the programs.

And Vice President JD Vance, a former senator from Ohio, was a leading supporter of a similar initiative in Congress, the Affordable Connectivity Program.

That program, though, serves as a cautionary tale for advocates for expanding digital access: Congress let its funding lapse last year.

Disconnecting rural communities?

Librarians and school officials who spoke with CNN are focused on the impact – and their budgets – far more than the politics.

O’Hagan’s said the library spends about $4,000 a month to provide internet to its five branches. That’s an 80% reduction on what it would normally cost – a difference that is covered by E-Rate, one of the programs at issue in the case.

“Without that support, we wouldn’t be able to provide internet access to our most susceptible community members,” she said.

Chase Christensen, superintendent of the Sheridan County School District #3 in northern Wyoming, also relies on an E-Rate program, which pays about 20% of the cost of managing the school’s internal internet network.

“It’s picking up the big chunk and making it a little bit more affordable,” Christensen said. “We can spend those dollars in the classroom instead of spending them on network infrastructure.”

The E-Rate program provided about $3.26 billion in discounts for interconnectivity in 2024, according to a brief supporting the FCC filed by the School Superintendents Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals and other groups. More than 106,000 schools benefited over the past two years. Sometimes schools use those resources in less than obvious ways.

“A lot of them are using the internet to power security systems or they’re using their internet to control the environment,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, with the superintendent’s group. “That’s not even about teaching and learning. It’s just about getting kids to schools and getting schools ready for kids.”

Danielle Perry, chief compliance officer for a California-based company called TruConnect, said the Lifeline program helps low-income Americans search for better jobs, attend telehealth visits and stay connected with family – in other words, the same things everyone uses the internet for.

“It’s something that most of us take for granted – never think about it,” she said. “But these are people who just desperately need this program.”

Dear Commons Community,

Science had an article on Friday entitled, “Overseas universities see opportunity in U.S. ‘brain drain‘”. It comments on the movement of  American researchers to universities outside of the United States.  Here is the article in its entirety.

“When Emma saw a posting for a faculty position in the University of Mississippi’s School of Pharmacy late last year, she thought she’d found her dream job. The early-career chemist, who asked not to use her real name to avoid jeopardizing her current role, had already left her home in Europe to pursue an academic career in the United States, and was committed to staying.

But by the time she’d cleared the application process, she started to have major reservations. “Every day I would see news articles on federal workers who were let go, funds being withheld unless [diversity, equity, and inclusion] initiatives were shut down,” she says.

She worried about a lack of future funding, and about ricocheting effects on universities. Last month, “I decided to withdraw my candidacy … despite being offered everything I needed,” she says.

Emma now plans to move back to Europe. She’s not alone: Universities globally have reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers, who face an increasingly uncertain climate under President Donald Trump’s administration. And some countries and their institutions are already looking to use the opportunity to attract new talent and reverse the steady migration of scientists to the U.S. in recent decades.

France has been among the fastest off the blocks. Aix Marseilles University launched an initiative earlier this month called a Safe Place for Science, which will invest as much as €15 million to support about 15 researchers. The offer has so far attracted more than 50 applicants, says a university spokesperson, and the institution “has already welcomed one researcher” for a visit. Another French university, Paris-Saclay, tells Science it might extend or launch new initiatives to support U.S. researchers. And France’s research minister recently asked universities for “concrete proposals” on how to lure researchers from the U.S., according to Agence France-Presse.

Offers in some other countries have been more direct. After the Trump administration threatened to terminate $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University (see story, p. 1245), Yi Rao, a neurobiologist at Peking University, former president of Capital Medical University, and prominent Trump critic, contacted researchers at the institution to offer his help. “I was shocked to learn of the vast cancellation of grants and contracts,” he wrote in an email seen by Science, adding that “if any good scientist … wants to have a stable position for conducting scientific research, please do not hesitate to contact me.”

Many major foreign research institutions told Science they have no plans to actively recruit U.S. researchers, or didn’t reply to questions. But even universities that aren’t specifically recruiting that group could feel the effects of a wave of researchers looking to leave the country. The University of Barcelona, for example, has observed a spike in applications from the U.S. this year, largely from European researchers considering returning to the region, a school spokesperson says.

At the University of Lausanne, oncologist Johanna Joyce, president-elect of the European Association for Cancer Research, says unsolicited applications to her lab from U.S.-based scientists have risen fivefold since January. “The future for so many scientists in the U.S. and around the world has rapidly become very uncertain.”

Some policy experts say national governments should be doing more to attract U.S. talent. Danielle Cave, director of executive, strategy, and research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has pushed for Australia to offer fast-track visas to top U.S. scientists, an idea also under discussion in Norway and other countries. Not capitalizing on the situation “would be wasting a unique opportunity,” she says.

Researchers could face a sobering reality once they try to nail down roles abroad, however. In Canada, where there have been loud calls for research institutions to take up U.S. émigrés, higher education is facing debilitating cuts, notes Richard Gold, director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at Mc-Gill University. McGill recently announced it would slash CA$45 million and more than 250 jobs to address a funding deficit. In the United Kingdom, many universities are also cutting jobs and 72% could be operating in deficit by 2026, according to a report from the country’s higher education regulator.

For now, the situation for U.S. academics remains rife with uncertainty, with some Trump administration actions blocked by judges or partially reversed. The full effects of its policies are unlikely to be seen until the fall, when university admissions and faculty transfers ramp up. But if large numbers of academics working in the U.S. do decide to leave, Gold doubts other countries will be able to absorb them all. The end result, he warns, could be an exodus of talent from global science. “My biggest fear,” he says, is that “we’re going to lose a cohort of researchers.”

Young researchers should seriously consider opportunities outside the U.S.

How sad!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Cerebral Entanglements:  How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives, by Allan J. Hamilton.  The author is a professor at the University of Arizona and has received awards for his work in neurosurgery.  I found it a good book mainly because the author knows his topic well.  He gets into the weeds at times when discussing the workings of the most complex organ in our body.  The book’s sixteen chapters covers an array of topics including consciousness, affection, trust, romance, religion, etc.  I thought his concluding chapter on the brain of the future was the most interesting.  In the Epilog, Hamilton provides concerns about the perils of unfettered artificial intelligence.  

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

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The New York Times

Review of Books

Can Understanding the Brain Make Us Better People?

By Deborah Blum

Deborah Blum is the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at M.I.T. and the author of “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Quest for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.”

Feb. 12, 2025

CEREBRAL ENTANGLEMENTS: How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives, by Allan J. Hamilton

The human brain! It’s amazing! A master conductor of our emotional symphonies, a supercomputer of intelligence, a treasure inside the “temple” of the skull, where it gloriously shimmers “vivid, vital, jewel-like.” I mean, is it any wonder we’re such a special species?

Sorry: I had to get that out of my system. Books built on hyperbole seem to bring out the worst in me. And “Cerebral Entanglements,” a new book by the surgeon and medical consultant Allan J. Hamilton, is so breathlessly excited about our brains and how they work, about the dazzle of new insights and technologies, that occasionally this reader felt compelled to take a break and fan herself.

Image

On the other hand, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys hearing the brain described as “the holy of holies,” the chemistry of human relationships as “finding treasure on the map of love” and happiness as “a good wine,” then disregard my reaction.

Obviously, I’m not that kind of person. Still, in the interest of fairness, I’ll also tell you that Hamilton’s tour of all things brain does have its charms and virtues: a friendly writing style, a core of moral decency and a wide-ranging wealth of research to back up his points.

“Cerebral Entanglements” sprawls across many different fields that investigate how we (and our busy brains) engage with the world: neuroscience, endocrinology, history, culture, psychology, moral philosophy — well, you get the idea. New technologies allow us to visually illuminate the brain as it encounters myriad issues and challenges. This means, Hamilton argues, that we are the “first generation to be able to image and quantify human thought” — an idea to justify some exuberance, you might say — and in the 300-odd pages of his book, he does his best not to miss a single thought of importance.

Of this bounty, I particularly liked his compassionate exploration of the way children’s brains are altered by trauma and neglect. Hamilton underlines the impact of such experiences by citing studies that show a negative effect even on fetal development if a pregnant woman is exposed to violence. There’s an insightful look at what brain imaging and neurochemistry research has shown us about how grief, loss and depression can reshape the brain, changing both its physical structure and chemical function.

The book includes a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (f.M.R.I.) depictions of the brain as it responds to situations ranging from stress to injury. These are fascinating and powerful. I studied and restudied one of a patient suffering from PTSD, the image red as a bomb on a timer, lit by brain regions sparking with fear and rage.

But despite such examples — or as Hamilton puts it, such “heady stuff” — I did not find myself swept away by his assurance that we are now drivers at the wheel of the brain car, so to speak. When he writes that the brain is “the master editor of reality,” I’m not sure exactly what he means. Similarly, when he proposes that imaging technology now allows us to “see wisdom’s shape and form,” it’s unclear to me that we’ve learned how to define wisdom, to see it clearly or even to practice it in a meaningful way.

Although Hamilton is prone to such sweeping statements, he also occasionally admits some limits. In a section on the subconscious, he acknowledges that “the brain rarely works the way we think it does or should.” Later, while examining the mind-body connection, he writes, “We think we have sound logical explanations about the way the brain should be organized but we are almost always wrong.”

Yes, the human brain is beautiful, remarkable and powerful. And it’s true that researchers have brought us closer than ever to mapping its structure, deciphering the chemistry and electrical signals that zing through our nervous systems, helping us better understand what drives human behaviors at their best and worst. But the brain has yet to yield all its mysteries.

In his conclusion, Hamilton expresses the hope we can use our hard-acquired knowledge of the human self to reinforce our more compassionate behaviors, and, possibly, bring more kindness to a world that desperately needs it. This reviewer, cranky as she may be, hopes for the same.

Dear Commons Community,

Under threat from the Trump administration, Columbia University agreed to implement a suite of policy changes yesterday, including overhauling its rules for protests and conducting an immediate review of its Middle Eastern studies department.

The changes, detailed in a letter sent by interim president, Katrina Armstrong, came one week after the Trump administration ordered the Ivy League school to implement those and other changes in order to continue receiving federal funding, an ultimatum widely criticized in academia as an attack on academic freedom.  As reported by The Associated Press.

In her letter, Armstrong said the university would immediately appoint a senior vice provost to conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of its regional studies programs, “starting immediately with the Middle East.”

Columbia will also bar protests inside academic buildings and the wearing of face masks on campus “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons.

The Trump administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other federal funding, and had threatened to cut more, over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The White House has labeled the protests antisemitic, a label rejected by those who participated in the student-led demonstrations.

As a “precondition” for restoring funding, federal officials demanded that the university to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”

They also told the university to ban masks on campus, adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”

Columbia said it had agreed to do many of those things, including adopt a definition of antisemitism.

Sad day for American higher education!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

British satirical magazine Private Eye took aim at President Donald Trump’s so-far unsuccessful attempts to broker an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and his adulation of Russian President Vladimir Putin —with its scathing new cover.

The main headline read: “Russia Demands To Keep Captured Territory.”

A photograph below showed Putin declaring in a speech bubble: “Including the White House.”

Trump boasted during the 2024 presidential election campaign that he would end the conflict in Ukraine on his very first day back in the White House.

That didn’t happen.

Since returning to office, Trump has falsely claimed that Ukraine was to blame for being invaded and attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator.”

Private Eye is a long standing bi-weekly satirical publication, written by credible journalists exposing corruption and inept politicians. Its front covers are always poignant. Like this one.

Most poignant!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As expected, President Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday that calls for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to begin the process of shutting down the Department of Education.  As reported by The Huffington Post and other media.

Yesterday afternoon, Trump announced that his administration would “return education back to the states.”

“Today we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making,” Trump said.

The president said that under the new order, crucial education funding for low-income students and students with disabilities, including Pell Grants and Title I funding, will be redistributed to other agencies and departments.

He praised the work of dozens of Republican governors, state attorneys general and the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, for their advocacy against the federal department. Christopher Rufo, a conservative writer and activist who has crusaded against DEI in education, was also in attendance.

Trump repeatedly trashed the Department of Education on the campaign trail and had promised to abolish it completely.

“The Department of Education is a big con job,” Trump told reporters last month. “I’d like it to be closed immediately.” It’s unclear exactly what will be in the order. While Trump could shutter many of the department’s programs and services, an act of Congress would be required to eliminate it.

The department has been in Republican crosshairs since its creation in 1980, but despite the GOP’s criticism of the agency, the political implications of dissolving it have made calls for its elimination purely rhetorical — until now.

The order Trump signed is the culmination of a yearslong fight by conservative activists and Republican officials who have increasingly sought to use schools as a means for pushing right-wing ideology on children. They have smeared teachers as abusers, censored educators, banned hundreds of books from classrooms, mounted outright takeovers of school boards, and launched an all-out war on transgender kids by barring them from sports and bathrooms that match their gender identities.

McMahon acknowledged at her nomination hearing last month that an act of Congress would be required to axe the department she would soon lead. She hedged on the question of eliminating the agency outright during the hearing, but in documents shared with HuffPost said she “wholeheartedly supports” Trump’s vision for the agency.

But McMahon could reduce the department’s workforce and slash funding to the point where it would be a shell of its former self. A few hours after she was confirmed by the Senate, McMahon sent an email to the department’s staff urging them to join her on the agency’s “final mission.”

“This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” McMahon reportedly wrote in the email. “I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger and with more hope for the future.”

The executive order was preceded by mass firings of thousands of employees. McMahon said the cuts reflect “the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.” The agency said the reduction whittled the staff count down from about 4,100 to approximately 2,183.

Trump also applauded McMahon’s work and signaled that her role could change if Congress approves the department’s elimination.

“Hopefully you won’t be there too long,” Trump said at the order’s signing. “We’re going to find something else for you to do, Linda.”

The Education Department currently supports 26 million low-income students through Title I funding, handles civil rights complaints from students and their families, ensures equal access to school for 7.4 million students with disabilities, and distributes federal financial aid so that low-income students can afford college.

But right-wing culture warriors have promoted the idea that the federal agency is responsible for “indoctrinating” children with left-wing ideology, even though each state sets its own curricula.

Educators and advocates have been sounding the alarm for months about what Trump’s plans for education mean for the nearly 50 million children currently enrolled in U.S. public schools.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the department has one purpose: “to level the playing field and fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed.”

“Trying to abolish it — which, by the way, only Congress can do,” she continued, “sends a message that the president doesn’t care about opportunity for all kids.”

Abolishing the agency “will reverse five decades of progress for students with disabilities,” Katy Neas, the CEO of the Arc of the United States, a nonprofit group that advocates for people with disabilities, said in a statement. “Children with disabilities who do not receive appropriate education services will face greater isolation, unemployment, and poverty. We cannot afford to undo the hard-won gains of the past — we must protect the future of every student, because the strength of our society depends on it.”

McMahon has said that some of the department’s functions, like resources for students with disabilities, would move to other agencies, but experts warn that the loss of technical expertise would still make it difficult for other agencies to run programs previously overseen by the Department of Education.

Congress would need to pass legislation to eliminate fully the Department, but Trump could still stop many of its key functions.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump did not hold back when describing the state of the United States in the first Cabinet meeting of his second term.

 As reported by Mediaite, Trump said “the country has gotten bloated, fat and disgusting,”  

Trump was answering a question about the massive cuts in staffing with federal employees.

“I think Elon (Musk) wants to and I think it’s a good idea because, you know, those people, as I said before, they’re on the bubble,” Trump said. ”You got a lot of people that have not responded. So we’re trying to figure out  — Do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired. And if that happened, that’s okay, because that’s what we’re trying to do.”

“This country has gotten bloated, fat, disgusting, and incompetently run,” Trump said. “I think we had the worst president in the history of our country. He just left office. I think he’s a disgrace what he’s done to our country by allowing millions of people to come into our country.

Trump looks in a mirror too much.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mchael J. Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University, had an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star yesterday entitled, “Trump has no plan to fix the economy – and Americans know it.”   It is a sober piece that portends financial struggle or worse for our economy over the next year or more. Below is his entire commentary.

Tony

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Recessions are caused by economic shocks that affect either the demand or the supply of goods and services. President Donald Trump’s policy choices target both supply and demand.

This helps explain the rapid reversal of economic growth that has descended upon the United States. Because these effects hit both consumers and producers, changing course will become increasingly difficult.

This risks a very painful type of recession.

Before I explain how this recession might play out, it is useful to address the president’s main assertion that he is trading short-term pain for long-term gain. It is bunk.

Americans know Trump plan has no long-term gain

The range of economic responses, from declining stocks to reduced consumer sentiment and spending, suggests that families and businesses understand there is no long-term gain in Trump’s plan.

If the White House offered a cogent and thoughtful plan to improve the U.S. economy, then stocks would be rising, business investment accelerating and consumer sentiment rising. That would be true, even if there was economic sacrifice involved.

To illustrate this, imagine if the president offered Congress a realistic plan to balance the budget over five years. It would need to include broad tax increases, targeted spending cuts and a major reworking of our entitlement programs.

Such a plan would cause short-term pain to most American families and businesses. But it would also reduce long-term borrowing costs, ensure the survival of Social Security and Medicaid, and again make us a prime location for foreign investors.

That would boost stocks and provide confidence to American investors and consumers.

Nothing remotely like that is under consideration. In fact, the plan passed by the House would be the most inflationary budget in U.S. history. Every business knows this, every member of Congress knows this and even the president’s economic advisers know this.

Market participants ‒ from homebuyers in Houston to artificial intelligence tech investors to mutual fund advisers to people planning new car purchases ‒ are all aware there is no long-run plan for economic gain.

Prices up, interest rates up: Cycle continues until courageous Republicans act

Indeed, the long-term risk to the economy is now stagflation – the combination of deep reductions of supply and demand alongside an inflationary budget. This hamstrings policies that might reduce the pain of a recession in two ways.

First, our federal debt has become so large that fiscal policy – like the $5,000 stimulus floated by Elon Musk – is unlikely to affect demand.

Second, any inflationary spending policies will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. This will further reduce spending and new business expansion – cutting both demand and supply.

We are in a cycle that will continue until political pressure ends it. Writing that sentence made me chuckle, because that political pressure would have to come from courageous Republicans.

Ironically, the greatest policy impacts on supply and demand tend to surround the purchase of goods, not services. Tariffs are placed primarily on goods, increasing their price and the price of substitute goods. So all automobiles, not just those made in Canada, will see price increases.

The effects will worsen with stagflation, because interest rates will remain high.

Cars and homes will cost more, and borrowing to buy them will be more expensive. We should see households shift their consumption from goods to services. I think this will be big enough to wholly reverse the manufacturing production boom that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.

Red states face highest risks

The really interesting aspect of this is that red states tend to dominate the production of goods, while blue states are far more service-oriented.

This is also true at the county and city level.

GOP voters are far more likely to work in the trades, construction and manufacturing, while Democratic voters toil in service sectors: health care, education and professional services.

As with most downturns, the economic pain will not be uniformly distributed.

I make this point only to illustrate that Trump’s rapid recession will cause plenty of tears, but they mostly won’t be those sweet, sweet liberal tears that appeal to his MAGA followers.

Unlike Trump, I don’t revel at the economic pain of people with differing political views. I dislike recessions.

Employment shocks, like the one that is just starting, fall most heavily on the least educated workers, such as those who have not been to college or finished high school. Lost jobs mean that hardworking people lose careers, homes and oftentimes must move from the places they love.

Economic shocks to agriculture and manufacturing are more geographically concentrated, so some cities or towns will be heavily affected, while others escape the deepest job losses.

Workers in manufacturing, construction, logistics and agriculture face far greater challenges finding similar employment anywhere. These workers endure much more painful transitions to new occupations. A large share never again finds meaningful work, and their children have poorer economic prospects than those who do not lose jobs.

Over the past few years, economists were widely criticized for insisting that the economy was strong, even with high single-digit inflation. The coming downturn is going to make it starkly clear why economists are far more worried about the long-term economic effects of, say, an 8% unemployment rate than an 8% inflation rate.

We really dislike both coming at the same time – which is where Trump’s policies are pushing us. By Christmas, many Americans are going to be nostalgic for former President Joe Biden’s economy.

Of course, there is some opportunity to prevent much of this. If the president admitted that his tariffs are a mistake, stopped threatening federal spending like the CHIPS Act and made amends with our allies, he could undo much of the damage. If he could corral a bipartisan Congress to pass meaningful spending cuts and tax increases to balance the budget, we would surely experience an improved economic outlook.

I chuckled while writing that paragraph, too. He’d much rather taunt a Canadian leader than save your job. The president inherited a solid economy poised for a soft landing. He chose a recession.  

Dear Commons Community

The U.S. Department of Education’s office of educational technology has been eliminated as part of the federal agency’s massive reduction in force, according to sources familiar with the layoffs and an email notice obtained by Education Week.

The office, also called OET, was tasked with setting a national education technology plan and assisting states and districts in implementing technology in schools. Practically speaking, the OET has helped states and districts navigate whatever new and emerging technology is affecting schools—from cellphones and social media to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity—by providing policy guidance and evidence-based strategies.

The OET staffers are among the hundreds of employees dismissed from the Education Department, after the federal agency announced that it will shrink its workforce to about 2,200 employees by March 21. That’s just over half of its size when President Donald Trump—who has repeatedly pledged to eliminate the 45-year-old agency—took office on Jan. 20.

While the OET was small, consisting of just three career officials and a handful of fellows, proponents of its work said the office had an outsize impact.

“There’s going to be a new technology—it’s inevitable,” said Joseph South, the chief innovation officer for ISTE/ASCD, who was a former OET director during the Obama administration. “States and districts are going to be trying to figure it out, … and there won’t be an entity that’s gathering research on effective pedagogy, best practices, and then responding back to states with guidance.”

Not all states have a dedicated team or person who coordinates ed-tech, he added.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement announcing the overall reduction in force, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the goal was to make the agency more efficient.

After this announcement, several news sources were reporting that Trump intends to sign an executive order eliminating the entire Education Department today!

Tony