The New Yorker:

Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education: In an unsigned order yesterday, the Supreme Court permitted the Trump Administration to fire some thirteen hundred employees from the D.O.E., overturning two lower-court decisions and effectively green-lighting President Trump’s plan to destroy the agency.

How bad is it? “The demolition of the D.O.E. is cruel, nihilistic sabotage: of vital educational research and financial-aid programs; of the rights of low-income students and students with disabilities,” Jessica Winter, a staff writer covering education, told us by e-mail. “But, as Trump once said, ‘When you’re a star, they let you do it,’ and the Court’s conservative supermajority agrees. A President cannot unilaterally abolish a federal agency created by an act of Congress—except he can, because a majority of the Justices say so.

“As Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated in her dissent, ‘When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.’ Right now, the law is whatever Trump says it is.”

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