Less than a quarter of Americans are happy with public education as Trump's plans to overhaul system loom
Almost three quarters of U.S. citizens say they are dissatisfied with the state of public education, according to a new poll.
Just 24 percent of respondents to Gallup's latest Mood of the Nation survey expressed satisfaction with the nation's schooling while 73 percent said they were dissatisfied, the lowest score since the research was first conducted in 2001.
The poll found a sharp distinction between Republicans and Democrats, with just 16 percent of conservatives backing public education, compared to 30 percent of left-leaning people surveyed.
The findings come as Donald Trump continues to toy with the idea of issuing an executive order demanding the complete closure of the Department of Education (DOE), already the smallest of all cabinet agencies by employee numbers and with an allocation for the 2024 fiscal year of just $238bn, less than two percent of the total federal budget.
The president first touted the possibility of closing down the DOE on the campaign trail and the proposal was also made in the Heritage Foundation 's controversial Project 2025 manifesto for his administration, which Trump has vainly attempted to distance himself from.
Founded by the late Jimmy Carter in 1979, the DOE is now run by 'people that hate our children', according to Trump, who has accused it of being ineffective and attempting to indoctrinate young people with 'woke' and 'anti-American' ideologies pertaining to race and gender via the curriculum.
'We're ranked number 40 out of 40 schools, right?' he said at the White House on Tuesday while discussing the federal agency.
'We're ranked number one in cost per pupil, so we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we're ranked at the bottom of the list.
'We're ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools.'
He has nominated former WWE boss Linda McMahon as Education Secretary (although she has yet to have her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate) and added that he wants her to 'put herself out of a job.'
Trump would require congressional approval to shut down the DOE outright (a remote possibility as things stand) but he and ally Elon Musk, who leads the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have reportedly already drafted an order that nevertheless instructs the department to begin reining in its activities, following up on their order to stand down staff hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Most of the DOE's key functions – like supplying grants for low-income students, providing guidance for students with disabilities, enforcing civil rights law and managing the federal student loan program – are codified in the law that first established it.
But even without securing sufficient support on Capitol Hill for its total abolition, Trump could greatly diminish the department by shifting its responsibilities to other agencies, cutting its funding and staff numbers and by axing key programs.
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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
ICE's tactics draw criticism as it triples daily arrest targets
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - Migrant workers picked up at a well-known Italian restaurant in San Diego. A high school volleyball player detained and held for deportation after a traffic stop in Massachusetts. Courthouse arrests of people who entered the U.S. legally and were not hiding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on Republican President Donald Trump's promise of record-level deportations. The White House has demanded the agency sharply increase arrests of migrants in the U.S. illegally, sources have told Reuters. That has meant changing tactics to achieve higher quotas of 3,000 arrests per day, far above the earlier target of 1,000 per day. Community members and Democrats have pushed back, arguing that ICE is targeting people indiscriminately and stoking fear. Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took to the streets after ICE arrested migrants at Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse, according to migrant advocates. 'It seems like they're just arresting people they think might be in the country without status and amenable to deportation,' said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The apparent shift further undercuts the Trump administration message that they are focused on the "worst of the worst" criminal offenders, and suggests they are pursuing more people solely on the basis of immigration violations. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, told Reuters in late May that the administration had deported around 200,000 people over four months. The total lags deportations during a similar period under former President Joe Biden, who faced higher levels of illegal immigration and quickly deported many recent crossers. ICE's operations appeared to intensify after Stephen Miller, a top White House official and the architect of Trump's immigration agenda, excoriated senior ICE officials in a late May meeting over what he said were insufficient arrests. During the meeting, Miller said ICE should pick up any immigration offenders and not worry about targeted operations that focus on criminals or other priorities for deportation, three people familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to share the details. Miller said ICE should target stores where migrant workers often congregate, such as the home improvement retailer Home Depot and 7-Eleven convenience stores, two of the people said. The message was 'all about the numbers, not the level of criminality,' one of the people said. Miller did not seem to be taking into account the complexities of immigration enforcement, one former ICE official said. In Los Angeles, for example, a 2024 court decision limits ICE's ability to knock on doors to make immigration arrests and local law enforcement does not cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities. "The numbers they want are just not possible in a place like L.A. unless you go to day laborer sites and arrest every illegal alien," the former ICE official said. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson defended Trump's enforcement push. 'If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported,' she said in a statement to Reuters. 'This is the promise President Trump made to the American people and the administration is committed to keeping it.' A DHS spokesperson said ICE officers executed criminal search warrants at the restaurant in San Diego; that the high school volleyball player in Massachusetts was subject to deportation; and that courthouse arrests were aimed at speeding up removals of migrants who entered under Biden. On Sunday, more than a hundred people gathered outside the jail in Butler County, Ohio, to protest the detention of Emerson Colindres, 19, a standout soccer player from Honduras who graduated from high school in May. Colindres, who has been in the U.S. since he was 8 years old, was being monitored via an ICE 'alternatives to detention' program that uses cell phone calls, ankle bracelets and other devices to track people. He received a text message to come in for an appointment last week and was taken into custody on arrival. Colindres was ordered deported after his family's asylum claim was denied, but he had been appearing for regular check-ins and had a pending visa application, his mother, Ada Baquedano, said in an interview. "They want to deport him, but he knows nothing about our country,' she said. 'He's been here since he was very little.' The DHS spokesperson said Colindres had a final deportation order and that too many people with such orders had previously been placed on alternatives to detention. 'If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen,' the spokesperson said. The Migration Policy Institute's Gelatt said detaining people at ICE check-ins will help the agency boost arrest numbers. But these are often people who are already cooperating with ICE and could cost more to detain.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump calls LA a ‘trash heap' of ‘chaos and disorder' in Fort Bragg troop rally after sending Marines to quell protests
President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned what was meant as a celebration of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, for soldiers at one of the nation's most storied military bases, into a bellicose campaign-style rally as he attacked Democratic elected officials and denigrated the country 's second-largest city as a c esspool made rotten by 'uncontrolled migration.' Speaking before a crowd of uniformed soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Trump defended his decision to send National Guard soldiers and active duty Marines to quell protests against his anti-immigrant deportation operations in Los Angeles as necessary to prevent attacks on federal law enforcement from a 'violent mob.' He claimed that had he not ordered the soldiers into federal service over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles would be on fire, and compared the guardsmen's mission to past overseas battles in which the Army had fought over its 250 years. 'Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California. As Commander in Chief, I will not let that happen. It's never going to happen,' Trump said, overstating the current state of affairs in LA by several degrees. Trump told the soldiers that the protests and unrest in Los Angeles represented a 'full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags, with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country,' before segueing into a partisan attack on former President Joe Biden. He accused 'stupid people or radical left people or sick people' in the previous administration of having allowed 'millions of people' to 'come into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted' and claimed those people were responsible for attacks on police in Los Angeles over the last few days. 'They're hurling bricks and cinder blocks at law enforcement ... they're breaking up the sidewalks and the curbs, breaking it up with big, strong hammers. These guys are professionals. These are not amateurs,' he claimed. 'These are animals, but they proudly carry the flags of other countries, but they don't carry the American flag. They only burn it.' The president cast his effort to use military force to tamp down protests against his immigration policies as a battle against a foreign foe rather than repression of the free speech rights guaranteed to all by the U.S. Constitution, telling the soldiers who'd been ordered to attend his speech that his administration would 'not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' 'That's what they are. Lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. They came from prisons. They came from jails from all over the world. They came from mental institutions. They were the leaders of gangs. They were drug lords, allowed to come into our country,' he said. Trump's partisan commentary to the troops touched on many of the anti-immigrant tropes that have long been a staple of his political stump speech during his three campaigns for the presidency, including claims that other countries have deliberately sent criminals and mental patients to the United States to claim asylum with the consent of the Biden administration and the aid of Democrats in state and local governments. He also praised the thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines he has dispatched over the past two days for 'standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law' while accusing Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of fomenting the violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. 'In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor — they're incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists, they're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders,' he said. Continuing, the president praised his own election as a turning point when the country rejected Democratic rule and slammed Los Angeles as having 'gone from being one of the cleanest, safest and most beautiful cities on earth to being a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under the control of transnational gangs and criminal networks.' Echoing the openly racist rhetoric of European far-right parties, Trump blamed 'uncontrolled migration' for the city's supposed condition of 'chaos, dysfunction and disorder' and suggested that European leaders should adopt his anti-immigrant stance. 'They have it in Europe too. It's happening in many of the countries of Europe. They don't like it when I say it, but I'll say it loudly and clearly. They better do something before it's too late,' he said. The president's rabidly partisan denunciation of duly elected officials in the nation's most populous state came just hours after he made a chilling threat against free speech rights of Americans in the nation's capital ahead of the military parade he has ordered up to celebrate his own birthday on Saturday. Speaking in the Oval Office following an impromptu event to discuss forest management ahead of the upcoming summer wildfire season, Trump was riffing on what he described as violent excesses by protesters who've been demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles when he was asked about the possibility of protests against the June 14 parade. The president said it would be an 'amazing day' and cited the 'tanks ... planes ... all sorts of things' that will be on display during the spectacle, which is ostensibly meant to mark the Army's 250th. He compared the parade, which breaks from the American tradition that largely eschews militaristic or jingoistic displays of the sort routinely seen in authoritarian countries, to European celebrations of the end of the Second World War. 'We won the war, and we're the only country that didn't celebrate it, and we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday. We're going to have a lot of and if there's any protest that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,' Trump said. He reiterated the explicit threat a moment later, telling 'those people who want to protest' that they would be 'met with very big force' once more. He also opined further that any protest against the parade on Saturday would consist only of 'people who hate our country.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump preparing to send thousands of immigrants including Europeans to Guantanamo military prison: reports
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