The Dumbing Down of America

It’s as easy as G-O-P

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If not for teachers who cared deeply about our education, it is unlikely that many of us would have come anywhere near to realizing our potential. Many years ago, I wrote that “the dream begins with a teacher who believes in you.” And we are a nation that knows good schools are the foundations of its strength.

With those points in mind (and as many teachers along the way said to me many times), “Please pay attention!” What you’re about to read is vital.

Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to America’s education system and upended this country’s dedication to educating its citizens since day one of his second term. It is a coordinated, multi-pronged assault on everyone from toddlers in Head Start programs to would-be doctors in medical school.

His war plans can be found in the pages of Project 2025. The first line of the 44-page chapter on education reads, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”

In a you-can’t-make-it-up twist, the author of Project 2025’s education policy, Lindsey Burke, is now the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at, you guessed it, the Department of Education.

The Education Department was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Its mission is to ensure equal access to education for 68 million Americans by administering federal funding, providing student loans, and preventing discrimination through enforcing civil rights laws. The department also collects student data to improve the quality of education.

It takes an act of Congress to eliminate a federal agency, but the administration has found ways to circumvent the law. First, the president signed an executive order to dismantle the department. Then it withheld billions of allocated dollars without congressional approval and slashed half of its 4,000 employees.

When the administration was sued to restore those jobs, the Supreme Court backed the president’s plan. Then, last week Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that the department’s responsibilities would be reassigned to various other cabinet departments, effectively shuttering it.

Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Democrat who serves on the House Committee on Education & Workforce and is a former high school history and government teacher, has pushed for more transparency and information for American families.

“I think one of the biggest problems with what the administration is doing, outside of it being illegal and the speed at which it is being done, there’s no assurance to the American people of what this will look like in the future and how we will ensure that there’s no disruption of services to children,” Hayes told us.

Head Start
Those services to children begin with Head Start, one of the most successful “War on Poverty” programs, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. It helps prepare the most at-risk children for kindergarten by providing early childhood education, meals, support for children with disabilities, and health screenings. More than 60% of participants are Black and Latino.

The agency, which has enjoyed bipartisan support for six decades, weathered mass layoffs by the administration in April. During the government shutdown, no Head Start funding was distributed. Some Head Start sites cut staff, reduced hours or took out loans to remain open. Others closed altogether.

It should surprise no one that this was the plan all along. Project 2025 called for the elimination of Head Start, which has served 40 million children since its inception.

Higher Education
Less than one percent of American college students attend elite universities, though Trump’s cabinet bucks that statistic. While he went to the University of Pennsylvania, his vice president has a law degree from Yale. Secretaries Hegseth and Kennedy attended Harvard. Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley are also represented.

For someone who was educated in the Ivy League and surrounds himself with the well educated, Trump has had elite institutions of higher education in his crosshairs for months.

Elite colleges and universities are castigated by some as strongholds of the radical left. The far-right thinks they are indoctrination centers for Democrats. So fighting these institutions is a double-sided win for the president: taking down left-wing proving grounds and dismantling the elite, which will play well in Peoria and with the hyper-conservative MAGA base.

It started in January with the cutting of billions of dollars in research grants that had already been awarded. The president then used restoring grant money as a carrot to force changes to policies he didn’t like. Some schools have reached financial settlements with the White House that include concessions on sharing information and staffing changes.

Columbia University paid a $220 million “fine,” while Brown paid $50 million. Cornell has agreed to pay $60 million for violating civil rights laws, though it was not found to have actually violated any. The University of Virginia agreed to make changes to its DEI programs. In exchange, the administration will close federal investigations into the school. This is extortion.

So far Princeton, Northwestern, and Duke have pushed back on White House pressure. Harvard withstood the most aggressive assaults. The president threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status in response to the university suing to unfreeze $2 billion in federal funding.

Ultimately, the president wants to control what these universities teach and he is using intimidation and the vast financial resources of the federal government to do so.

Student Loans
A closer read of the president’s July spending bill has revealed a myriad of provisions that will have devastating effects on the country for decades to come. One of them has to do with federally-backed student loans.

The bill has killed the long-standing undergraduate and graduate school loan programs and the “borrow up to the cost of attendance” model. It has been replaced with a much more restrictive program. As of next year, many Americans will not be able to afford to go to college or graduate school.

Undergraduate loans will be capped at $20,000 a year with a $65,000 lifetime maximum. Graduate school loans are also capped, but with a catastrophic twist.

“Professional” degree seekers can get $50,000 a year with a $200,000 max. Among the list of professional degrees are medical doctor, lawyer, veterinarian, podiatrist, chiropractor, and, inexplicably, theologian. For context, the cost of a four-year medical degree is between $120,000 and $600,000, while the average is $236,000. And all this at a time when the country is facing a shortage of doctors.

The bigger issue is what the administration is now labeling “non-professional” degrees, which have even tighter financial restrictions: $20,500 annually and $100,000 lifetime borrowing limits. The list of non-professional degrees includes those for nurses, physician assistants, physical therapists, teachers, architects, accountants, engineers, and social workers, among others.

The nursing shortage in this country is more dire than the doctor shortage and getting worse as the population ages. And the teacher shortage, especially in underserved communities, is acute.

“It’s going to be really hard to recruit talent to the profession, to recruit young people who live in these communities to come back and work if you’re saying, first of all, we’re not gonna help you get a degree, we’re not gonna give you the professional support that you need, and then we’re not going to give you the resources once you’re in the classroom,” Hayes explained.

A “Patriotic” Curriculum
The federal government is prohibited by law from “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” in schools. The job of curriculum creation is given to the states. But that hasn’t stopped the president.

In September, the Department of Education rolled out a “landmark initiative” that is “dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.” That may not sound terrible until you understand who is creating the curriculum.

The initiative is helmed by the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, a group of 40 conservative organizations including Moms For Liberty (of book banning fame), Turning Point USA (an organization dedicated to indoctrinating high school and college students into far-right politics) and, you guessed it, the Heritage Foundation (the architect of Project 2025).

What is the likelihood this civic education initiative will include a historically accurate curriculum on topics like slavery or the civil rights movement?

It’s just this simple — and dangerous: The president and his far-right enablers don’t want an educated electorate. They want to limit information, which will curtail critical thinking and opposition to their authority for years to come.

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Stay Steady,
Dan