We sure didn’t see this one coming. And frankly, it’s worth the price of admission to sit back and watch the once-united Republican Party cleave into warring factions before Donald Trump is even sworn in.
What started as a schoolyard scrape within Trump’s inner circle, between the tech bros and the MAGA faithful, has blossomed into a reason to take a hard look at an essential government department the president-elect has promised to eliminate.
If you’re not up to speed on this, the new Musk wing of the Republican Party is making head-spinning demands. To wit: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two billionaires Trump picked to head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are demanding an increase in visas for high-tech immigrant workers. America doesn’t have enough qualified applicants to fill the demand, they say. And having enough engineers helps both of their bottom lines.
This perspective, of course, contradicts the Republican “immigrants-are-bad” narrative that helped propel a convicted felon to the White House.
But what has really set the MAGAsphere on fire is the insinuation that American workers — and by extension, American students — are too lazy, incompetent, and indifferent to realize the MAGA vision of a return to American “greatness.”
It all started when Ramaswamy, a tech bro himself, went off script. He decided to weigh in on why the United States needs more H-1B visas, which allow highly skilled foreign nationals, i.e. immigrants, to work in the country.
Ramaswamy took to X to make his point. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the Valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote. “More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”
Whoa. That didn’t go over well with the old-school MAGA types who are now calling Ramaswamy and Musk many names, including the deepest cut of all,” communist.” Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said, “The H-1B visa program is a total and complete scam from its top to the bottom.” Trump acolyte Laura Loomer says Musk “bought his way into MAGA” and is a “stage five clinger” who will soon find himself divorced from Trump.
Ramaswamy isn’t wrong that there is a national shortage of engineers. A recent study found that one-third of the 400,000 new engineering jobs created each year are going unfilled. But what’s not being widely reported is that the H-1B program allows for only 85,000 visas a year and isn’t restricted to engineers, so it alone isn’t closing the gap, nor is it taking jobs from American engineers.
The majority of those visas go to workers from India and China. Bannon and his ilk are stoking the flames of conflict for nothing more than clicks and to prove their bona fides to Trump. You don’t have to be an aeronautical engineer to understand the Right’s real objections here.
Ramaswamy certainly succeeded in touching a nerve when he questioned the seriousness of American students’ study habits, though blaming the “woke” education system has been the criticism of choice. It is this narrative, that American public education is broken beyond repair, that Trump has glommed onto.
A Pew poll found that since the pandemic trust in public schools has dropped precipitously, especially among Republicans. In April 2020, 79% had confidence in K-12 principals. Today only 52% do. Public schools have become a punching bag for the hard right. Teachers who should be vaunted are disdained and accused of left-wing indoctrination. Principals are being threatened with violence.
Trump is using American schoolchildren as pawns in his culture war and to justify his decision to “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” And to eliminate the Department of Education altogether.
The Department of Education is not found in the U.S. Constitution. In 1867, President Andrew Jackson signed legislation to create a small, non-Cabinet level department to collect information and statistics about the nation’s growing school system. It remained small over subsequent decades and was housed under different agencies. It wasn’t until 1979 that President Jimmy Carter made it a Cabinet department.
The department still collects data on the almost 50 million children educated in American public schools. It administers billions of dollars in grant money, mostly to schools that serve low-income students and those with disabilities. It also protects students’ and teachers’ civil rights and oversees a $1.6 trillion loan program for higher education.
What it doesn’t do is mandate curriculum, administer assessments, or provide requirements for teacher certification. All of those decisions are left to the states.
The probability that Trump will succeed in closing the Department of Education is slim. It can’t be done by executive order. It requires congressional approval. Remember all that grant money it allocates? Much of that money goes to rural schools in red states. So finding Republicans in Congress willing to eliminate that funding stream will be hard, if not impossible.
While the system needs fixing, Trump’s recipe risks disaster. Yes, the pandemic did a number on students across the country, causing gaps in learning that have yet to be made up. Test scores are down. But Trump’s fix, closing the Department of Education, will do nothing to improve student achievement, to funnel more women and minorities to STEM programs, or to reverse decades of inequality in the American public school system.
Another something to worry about as we move into the New Year and the new political reality. But in closing, please allow me to gently remind our Steady community of the power of optimism and hope.
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Dan
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