US supreme court allows Trump to resume gutting education department
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics amid the news that “America’s students will be the best, brightest, and most highly educated anywhere in the world,” according to Donald Trump as he welcomed the supreme court’s decision to allow him to resume dismantling the Department of Education.
In a late night post on Truth Social, the president said:
The United States Supreme Court has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country, by declaring the Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.
Now, with this GREAT Supreme Court Decision, our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may begin this very important process. The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE.
America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!
The three liberal justices on the court dissented over the decision which will allow McMahon – a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment – to lay off nearly 1,400 staff.
Education secretary Linda McMahon said it’s a “shame” it took the Supreme Court’s intervention to let Trump’s plan move ahead.
“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the president of the United States, as the head of the executive branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.
A lawyer for the Massachusetts cities and education groups that sued over the plan said the lawsuit will continue, adding no court has yet ruled that what the administration wants to do is legal.
“Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the US Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children. On its shadow docket, the Court has yet again ruled to overturn the decision of two lower courts without argument,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
Read the full story here:
Also overnight, Trump said he was “disappointed but not done” with Vladimir Putin in comments to the BBC’s journalist Gary O’Donoghue. It followed yesterday’s Oval Office meeting with Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, in which Trump promised a new weapons deal for Ukraine and threatened to impose “severe” sanctions on Russia if the war does not end within 50 days.
The interview also touched on the assassination attempt against him, how he is looking forward to his state visit to the UK and his immigration and tax policies and we will bring you some major lines shortly.
In other news:
-
Mike Waltz will face questioning from lawmakers for the first time since he was ousted as national security adviser. President Donald Trump has nominated him to be US ambassador to the United Nations, and he’s set to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing Tuesday.
-
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, thanked Donald Trump for saying that European nations, led by Germany and Norway, could purchase US-made Patriot missile air-defense systems on Ukraine’s behalf, to help defend the country against aerial bombardment by Russia.
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Donald Trump sowed widespread confusion when said that the US “would be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days” to halt Russia’s war on Ukraiune. “Tariffs at about 100%,” Trump added, “you’d call them secondary tariffs, you know what that means.” No one knew what that meant.
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A coalition of mostly Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit today challenging a move by Trump’s administration to withhold about $6.8bn in congressionally approved federal funding for K-12 schools.
-
Trump continued his attacks on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, calling the central banker a “stupid guy” and a “knucklehead” as the president called for interest rates to be lowered to 1% or less.
-
As Trump faced blowback from supporters over his administration’s decision to not release more information about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, more attention was being paid to the president’s evasive answer on the subject during a portion of an interview with Fox News last year that was not broadcast.
Key events
Stephen Starr
A Biden-era plan to implement a gas-powered blast furnace at a steel mill in Ohio, which would have eliminated tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment year over year and created more than a thousand jobs, has been put on hold indefinitely by the Trump administration.
Experts and locals say the setback could greatly affect the health and financial state of those living around the mill.
For 13 years, Donna Ballinger has been dealing with blasting noises and layers of dust from coal and heavy metals on her vehicles and house, situated a few hundred yards from the Cleveland-Cliffs-owned Middletown Works steel mill in south-west Ohio.
“I’ve had sinus infections near constantly. I have COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease],” she says. “When they’ve got the big booms going, your whole house is shaking.”
So when two years ago, the steel mill successfully trialed a hydrogen gas-powered blast furnace, the first time the fuel had been deployed in this fashion anywhere in the Americas, she was delighted. It cost an estimated $1.6bn, and the Biden administration, through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), coughed up $500m to help cover the cost of installing the technology.
Replacing a coal-powered furnace would have eliminated 1m tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment every year, according to Cleveland-Cliffs. It would also have saved the company $450m every year through “efficiency gains and reduced scrap dependency”, and created 1,200 construction and 150 permanent jobs in the town of 50,000 residents who have struggled for decades with manufacturing losses.
The US Senate will begin voting as soon as Tuesday on president Donald Trump’s request to slash $9.4 billion in spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting previously approved by Congress, the latest test of Trump’s control over his fellow Republicans.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s Republican majority leader, said he hoped the first procedural votes would take place on Tuesday, but he did not know whether he had enough votes for the measure to pass without amendments.
“I don’t know the answer to that at this point. We got a lot of feedback. And I know there are folks who would like to see at least some modest changes to it,” Thune told reporters.
The Senate has until Friday to act on the rescessions package – a request to claw back $8.3 billion in foreign aid funding and $1.1 billion for public broadcasting – or the request will expire and the White House will be required to adhere to the spending plans passed by Congress.
The amounts at stake are small in the context of the sprawling federal budget, which totaled $6.8 trillion in the fiscal year ended 30 September. Yet they have raised the hackles of Democrats and a handful of Republicans who see an attempt to erode Congress’s authority over spending.
Democrats say the programs in Trump’s crosshairs are foreign aid initiatives. These include support for women and children’s health and the fight against HIV/AIDS, programs that have long had strong bipartisan support. Democrats also oppose cutting funds supporting broadcasting they view as essential communications in rural areas.
Trump said he was “disappointed, but not done” with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, hours after he announced a military deal with Nato countries to arm Ukraine.
His announcement, alongside the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office, has been viewed in Europe as an important shift from Washington.
When asked if he was done with Putin, the president replied: “I’m disappointed in him, but I’m not done with him. But I’m disappointed in him.
“We had a deal done four times and then you go home and you see just attacked a nursing home in Kyiv. And so what the hell was that all about?” Asked if he trusted him, he said: “I trust almost nobody, to be honest with you.”
He also said he believed there was a newfound respect for him among world leaders – now he had twice won the presidency.
“When you do it twice, it’s the big difference. I also think that over the years, they’ve gotten to know me, this is not an easy crowd to break into,” he said. “These are smart people heading up very, very successful … countries, you know, they’re Germany and France, Spain and, yeah, big.”
Asked if he felt world leaders were being too obsequious and deferential, Trump said: “Well, I think they’re just trying to be nice.”
Trump says he thinks about assassination attempt ‘as little as possible’
Donald Trump also reflected on the attempted assassination of him, which the BBC journalist Gary O’Donoghue witnessed at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.
Speaking to BBC News, he said:
We had 55,000 people, and it was dead silence. And so, you know, I assumed that they expected the worst.
And so I had to let them know I was OK, which is what I did. That’s why I tried to get up as quick as possible. They had a stretcher ready to go. I said: ‘No, thank you.’
I actually had a big argument with them. They wanted me on a stretcher. And I said: ‘Nope, I’m not doing that.’
Trump said he did not like to spend time thinking about that day – but acknowledged it could affect him deeply if he started to dwell on it.
He said:
I like to think about it as little as possible.
I don’t like dwelling on it, because if I did, it might be life changing. I don’t want it to be that.
In that BBC interview, president Donald Trump said that he was convinced the UK would come to the US’s aid if it were at war.
He said:
I think they would be, I don’t think a lot of the other countries would be.
It’s a special relationship. Look, that’s why I made a deal with them … for the most part in terms of your competitors and in terms of the European Union, I haven’t made a deal.
Now the UK is very special … they have been a really true ally.
Trump, who has previously been a key advocate of Brexit, also suggested he did not think the potential had been fulfilled – but said Starmer was making progress:
No, I think, I think it’s been on the sloppy side, but I think it’s getting straightened out. I really like the prime minister a lot even though he’s a liberal, I think he’s, you know, he did a good trade deal with us.
US supreme court allows Trump to resume gutting education department
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics amid the news that “America’s students will be the best, brightest, and most highly educated anywhere in the world,” according to Donald Trump as he welcomed the supreme court’s decision to allow him to resume dismantling the Department of Education.
In a late night post on Truth Social, the president said:
The United States Supreme Court has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country, by declaring the Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.
Now, with this GREAT Supreme Court Decision, our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may begin this very important process. The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE.
America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!
The three liberal justices on the court dissented over the decision which will allow McMahon – a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment – to lay off nearly 1,400 staff.
Education secretary Linda McMahon said it’s a “shame” it took the Supreme Court’s intervention to let Trump’s plan move ahead.
“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the president of the United States, as the head of the executive branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.
A lawyer for the Massachusetts cities and education groups that sued over the plan said the lawsuit will continue, adding no court has yet ruled that what the administration wants to do is legal.
“Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the US Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children. On its shadow docket, the Court has yet again ruled to overturn the decision of two lower courts without argument,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
Read the full story here:
Also overnight, Trump said he was “disappointed but not done” with Vladimir Putin in comments to the BBC’s journalist Gary O’Donoghue. It followed yesterday’s Oval Office meeting with Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, in which Trump promised a new weapons deal for Ukraine and threatened to impose “severe” sanctions on Russia if the war does not end within 50 days.
The interview also touched on the assassination attempt against him, how he is looking forward to his state visit to the UK and his immigration and tax policies and we will bring you some major lines shortly.
In other news:
-
Mike Waltz will face questioning from lawmakers for the first time since he was ousted as national security adviser. President Donald Trump has nominated him to be US ambassador to the United Nations, and he’s set to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing Tuesday.
-
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, thanked Donald Trump for saying that European nations, led by Germany and Norway, could purchase US-made Patriot missile air-defense systems on Ukraine’s behalf, to help defend the country against aerial bombardment by Russia.
-
Donald Trump sowed widespread confusion when said that the US “would be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days” to halt Russia’s war on Ukraiune. “Tariffs at about 100%,” Trump added, “you’d call them secondary tariffs, you know what that means.” No one knew what that meant.
-
A coalition of mostly Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit today challenging a move by Trump’s administration to withhold about $6.8bn in congressionally approved federal funding for K-12 schools.
-
Trump continued his attacks on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, calling the central banker a “stupid guy” and a “knucklehead” as the president called for interest rates to be lowered to 1% or less.
-
As Trump faced blowback from supporters over his administration’s decision to not release more information about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, more attention was being paid to the president’s evasive answer on the subject during a portion of an interview with Fox News last year that was not broadcast.
