Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor for North Alabama. She writes an important blog called Civil Discourse, where she usually explains court decisions and legal issues. Today she turns to education.
Today I’m recovering from the graduation tour, one in Boulder and one in Boston in the last two weeks, and getting back into the groove of writing as I continue to work on my book (which I hope you’ll preorder if you haven’t already). The graduations came at a good moment.
Watching my kids graduate, one from college and one with a master’s in science, was an emotional experience—the culmination of their years of hard work, sacrifice, and growth, all captured in a single walk across the stage. They, like their friends, my law students, and amazing students across the county, now enter society as adults. Even beyond the individual stories of hardships overcome and perseverance, witnessing these rites of passage makes me feel profoundly hopeful. The intelligence and commitment of the students—many of whom are already tackling big problems and imagining new, bold solutions—gives me a level of confidence about what comes next for our country. In a time when it’s easy to get discouraged, their commitment and idealism stands as a powerful reminder that they are ready to take on the mess we have left them.
The kids are alright, even though they shouldn’t have to be. Talking with them makes me think they will find a way, even if it’s unfair to ask it of them and despite the fact that their path will be more difficult than it should be. Courage is contagious, and they seem to have caught it. Their educations have prepared them for the future we all find ourselves in now.
As students across the country prepared to graduate this year, Trump released his so-called “skinny budget.” If that’s how they want to frame it, then education has been put on a starvation diet—at least the kind of education that develops independent thinkers who thrive in an environment where questions are asked and answered. Trump pitches the budget as “gut[ting] a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security.” Defense spending would increase by 13% under his proposal.
The plan for education is titled, “Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice.”Among its provisions, the announcement focuses on the following items:
- “The Budget continues the process of shutting down the Department of Education.”
- “The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, that have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”
As we discussed in March, none of this is a surprise. Trump is implementing the Project 2025 plan. In December of 2024, I wrote about how essential it is to dumb down the electorate if you’re someone like Donald Trump and you want to succeed. A rich discussion in our forums followed. At the time I wrote, “Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.” But it’s really true for the entirety of democracy.
Explaining the expanded funding for charter schools, a newly written section of the Department of Education website reads more like political propaganda than education information: “The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has reigned [Ed: Note the word “”reigned” is misspelled] in the federal government’s influence over state Charter School Program (CSP) grant awards. The Department removed a requirement set by the Biden Administration that the U.S. Secretary of Education review information on how states approve select entities’ (e.g., private colleges and universities) authorization of charter schools in states where they are already lawful authorizers. This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape, and expands school choice options for students and families.”
There are already 37 lawsuits related to Trump’s changes to education. Uncertainty is no way to educate America’s children. Cutting funding for research because you want to score political points about DEI or climate change is no way to ensure we nurture future scientists and other thinkers and doers…
I am reminded again of George Orwell’s words: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” The historians among us, and those who delve into history, will play a key role in getting us through this. Our love and understanding of history can help us stay grounded, understanding who we are, who we don’t want to become, and why the rule of law matters so damn much to all of it….
Thanks for being here with me and for supporting Civil Discourse by reading and subscribing. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources necessary to do this work, and I am deeply grateful for them.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Animal Farm, a satirical allegory, uses farm animals to represent the events of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Soviet regime, highlighting the corruption of revolutionary ideals and the rise of totalitarianism.
1984 portrays a dystopian future where a totalitarian state controls every aspect of citizens’ lives, reflecting Orwell’s fears about the dangers of unchecked power and the manipulation of truth.
Today, Animal Farm and 1984 are becoming real through Trump’s fascist klepto-kakistocracy regime and Donald Trump who literally thinks and looks like Animal Farm’s Napoleon, while Trump’s Project 2025 was written to create what Orwell wrote in 1984.
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OUR UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONGRESS
There are two key factors that have brought America to this 2025 crisis point at which it will be decided “If any great nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”
The first key factor took place nearly a century ago: In 1929, while our nation was struggling with the collapse of the economy and the start of The Great Depression, Congress — racially-motivated by the growing representation power in Congress of the states whose populations were rapidly expanding because of immigration — slipped into law the Permanent Apportionment Act that put a lid on the House of Representatives at just 435 members.
Article 1, Section 2, of our Constitution stipulates that “The number of Representatives [in the House of Representatives] shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand” persons.
But, with the lid placed by the Permanent Apportionment Act, today there is only one Representative for every 780,000 citizens. That’s 25 TIMES LARGER than the constitutional 30,000 citizens per Representative — that THAT’S why people feel that the government doesn’t listen to them or represent them…because their individual voices are vastly diluted and are therefore unheard.
How was Congress able to get away with the unconstitutional Permanent Apportionment Act? Well, a major reason was that there was a high tide in 1929 of anti-immigrant sentiment among the general populace, so, most people agreed with diluting the political power of states with expanding immigrant populations.
The U.S. population in 1929 was just 122,000,000, meaning that there was one House Representative for each 280,000, so voices of citizens and citizen groups were still able to be heard, although dimly, after the Permanent Apportionment Act. In declaring its authority to change the representation ratio, Congress deliberately conflated the definitions of the words “apportion” and “enumeration” that are contained in Article 1, Section 2, which reads as follows: “Representatives…shall be APPORTIONED among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons [not just citizens], including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual ENUMERATION shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.”
In Article 1, Section 2, the antecedent of the phrase “actual Enumeration” is the preceding sentence which refers to the CENSUS COUNT (“enumeration”) to “be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that in the Constitution the word “enumeration” refers to A COUNTING PROCESS, such as the census taking. The meaning of “enumeration” is also contextually clear in Article 1, Section 2.
In contrast to “enumeration”, the word “apportion” means “to divide and allocate”.
“Apportioning” the Representatives means to divide the populations of each state by 30,000 and to then allocate each state the number of Representatives that are determined by that dividing as stipulated by Article 1, Section 2.
Our Founding Fathers designed Section 2 of Article 1 to function in conjunction with Section 1 of Article 1, which gives the formula for how many Electors each state receives. Together as a unit, Section1 and Section 2 make certain that as the population of each state increases, the state’s number of Electors increases proportionally.
Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution says that the “Number of Electors [shall be] equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives which the state may be entitled to in Congress.” In equation form, Article 2, Section 1 becomes: 2 + x = y with the first Addend “2” being the fixed number of a state’s Senators, and second Addend x being the number of a state’s Representatives (at the constitutional 30,000-to-1 ratio), and the Sum being the number of Electors the state gets.
But that proportional increase in Electors was stopped by the Permanent Apportionment Act because of the cap it places on Representatives. The result is that states with smaller populations, today predominantly Blue States, have proportionally more Electors than Red States with much larger populations, allowing that the President can be elected without the majority vote of We the People.
The minority of Americans can override the majority of Americans.
BOTTOM LINE: (1) Congress is unconstitutionally constituted because the Permanent Apportionment Act was based on a racist-based deliberate misinterpretation of the terms “enumeration” and “apportion”. (2) Invalidating the Act will restore our Founding Fathers’ intended level of representation in the House and will restore our Founding Fathers’ intended number of Electors to high-population states so that our President is ALWAYS elected in accord with the popular majority vote of We the People.
THE SECOND KEY FACTOR that has brought America to this crisis point is the U.S. Supreme Court’s warped ideological “Citizens United” decision in 2010. Reams have been written about why this decision is both wrong and disastrous and anyone can Google it all.
BUT, the Permanent Apportionment Act continues to remain below the radar.
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Interesting. Why haven’t democrats fought for this?
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House members aren’t going to fight to dilute the power that each of the smaller number have as opposed to the lesser power each member would have if the House were constitutionally apportioned. Just think: If the House were apportioned according to the constitutional ration of one Representative for every 30,000 people, there would be 11,334 members of the House of Representatives and the power of each individual Representative would be a fraction of what it is today.
For even the most idealistic, altruistic Representative, having political power is important.
Could the House function with 11,334 members? It could actually function better.
The House could meet in zoom sessions with each Representative being able to remain in his/her home district where each Representative would be accessible to the people in the district — and would be less accessible to the pressure of special interest lobbyists. Corporations, Wall Street, and all other special interest groups would face the logistical and financial cost of maintaining lobbyists in each of 11,334 districts or in hundreds of lobbyists offices that each try to cover a dozen closely-grouped districts.
House committees would have a very important role in synthesizing and summarizing issues and legislation for the House constituted according to the constitutional ratio.
It is certain that our Founding Fathers never in their wildest dreams foresaw that our nation would some day have a population of 340,000,000 because when they wrote our Constitution the population of the entire United States was only 4,000,000, which is the population today of just the City of Los Angeles, not including the county.
During the debate at the Constitutional Convention, many delegates argued that even a ratio of one Representative to every 30,000 population diluted representation too much.
A question which must be asked is: Is there an upper population limit for a nation at which point a representative democracy composed as ours is malfunctions because the number of representatives grows so large that the House becomes unwieldy, or that by increasing the ratio of representative-to-population the voices of the people becomes too diluted.
At the rate at which the U.S. population is growing, it won’t be long until we have one million people being “represented” by each of the 435 members of the House. People will fee so utterly voiceless that they will turn to other forms of government…as many are prepared to do right now.
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Get over your TDS. Stop bashing and offer solutions that help middle income Americans. Or are you playing to the elites who send their students to private schools or high property school tax suburbs. You are a fraud.
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