Jan Resseger, the most reliable analyst of federal programs, reports on the Trump administration’s decisions to increase or decrease or eliminate federal programs at will–regardless of Congressuonal direction.

By the way, be sure to read The New Yorker‘s fascinating dissection of the career path of wrestling entrepreneur and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Wrestling prepared her for politics, says writer Zach Helfand.

A brief excerpt:

Eventually, Linda McMahon came to be “tombstoned” (held upside down and slammed on her head) by a wrestler named Kane, “stunnered” (put in a three-quarter facelock jawbreaker) by Stone Cold Steve Austin, sexually assaulted, cheated on, driven to seek a divorce, lusted over, and sedated. Vince tried to get Shane to slap her in a scene, but Shane [her son] refused. Stephanie [her daughter] slapped her, though, and she slapped Stephanie. McMahon’s most memorable story arc involved Vince demanding a divorce, triggering a nervous breakdown in the ring which rendered her catatonic. For months, Vince would roll out her limp body in a wheelchair and subject her to various humiliations. The wrestler Trish Stratus, who was kissed and groped by Vince in a scene in front of a vegetative McMahon, has recalled that during rehearsal Linda asked, “If I drool, would that be more effective for my character?”

Before the election, I foolishly predicted that Trump would never get rid of the Department of Education because many Republicans support it. I did not anticipate that Trump would appoint a Secretary willing to hollow it out by transferring most of its programs to other departments.

Resseger follows up by showing how McMahon has cut and rearranged the budget:

If you have been tracking what is happening to federal funding for the nation’s public schools, you won’t be surprised to learn that Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman continues his role as the best reporter on this subject.  Here are two updates from last week.

How will federal funding flow this year once most of the Department of Education’s programs have been sent to other federal departments through interagency agreements?

Lieberman reassures state education officials and school district leaders that most key programs will continue to have their funds released “through the U.S. Department of Education’s grant portal this summer… Programs like Title I aid for disadvantaged students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)… allocate funds for school districts, but by law the money flows first to states in two batches, one on July 1 and another three months later… In a statement, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency is ‘committed to delivering formula funding by the July 1 deadline.”

Operation of Title I is traveling to the Department of Labor, and the work IDEA is traveling to the Department of Health and Human Services.  Lieberman describes what is expected to happen with Title I: “The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration in recent months has advertised new education grant competitions ‘on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education,’ and the two agencies have touted their collaboration in jointly running the competitions.  Still, most staffers overseeing those programs still work for the Department of Education. The postings announcing grant availability list Education department email addresses under the section with contact information.”

To what extent did the Trump Administration Violate the Congressional power of the purse last year?

Lieberman reports that data recently released by the Department of Education shows that under Linda McMahon’s leadership, the Department of Education “sidestepped Congress on more than $1 billion in education spending.”

“The Education Department, under President Donald Trump, subsequently subtracted appropriated funding from more than a dozen programs and instead added those dollars to other priorities, according to an Education Week analysis of congressional justification documents the White House published this month as part of its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal… The Education Department typically publishes its ‘spending plan’ mere weeks after Congress passes a new fiscal year budget, confirming allocations lawmakers laid out in their budget bills.  Congress approved fiscal 2025 spending (last year’s final federal budget) in March of last year, but the Education Department’s spending plan never materialized. That means the recently published numbers offer the first glimpse at how the executive branch decided to spend funds Congress appropriated more than a year ago.”

Here are merely some of Lieberman’s examples of what the new numbers show.  “For four Education Department programs, the Trump administration spent more than what Congress had prescribed: charter schools ($60 million added), civics instruction ($140 million added), historically Black colleges and universities ($439 million added), and tribal colleges ($56 million added).  To come up with those added expenditures, the Trump administration effectively zeroed out another four programs entirely, rerouting a total of $463 million for teacher preparation, public television, university foreign-language studies programs, and Hispanic-serving higher education institutions.  For another eight programs, the executive branch underspent the allocation Congress approved. That included redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars for minority-serving institutions within a higher education grant program—Aid for Institutional Development—that the Trump administration has argued violates the Constitution.”

Lieberman explains where McMahon’s department found $60 million to add to charter school spending: “To bolster the Charter Schools program, the agency depleted the entire $31 million allocation for the Ready to Learn grant program, which supports the development of educational TV programming for young children. The remaining $29 million boot for charter schools came from portions of fiscal 2025 allocations for four other programs: Magnet Schools ($14 million), Javits Gifted and Talented ($9 million),  Statewide Family Engagement Centers ($3 million), and Assistance in Arts Education ($3 million). The Trump administration last year slashed ongoing grants for each of those four programs as well as dozens of others, arguing in many cases that individual grantees were engaged in diversity-related initiatives that contradicted the president’s priories. But for most of those changes, the department offered no public announcement, instead notifying individual grant recipients with little warning that their awards had been discontinued.”

Perhaps there will be less cutting or rearranging of Congressionally allocated education dollars in the coming year: “Lawmakers included language in the fiscal 2026 budget law they approved in February that much more explicitly restricts movement of money from one program to another. The Department has already begun soliciting new grant applications for programs it moved to disrupt or shutter last year… Lieberman reports that the ranking members of the Senate and House appropriations committees, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) “said they prioritized unambiguous guardrails in the fiscal 2026 budget to block the Trump administration from further reprogramming funds.”

Lieberman adds, however, that Office  of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought has threatened to use “pocket rescissions,’ in which the executive branch proposes to rescind appropriated funds so late in the fiscal year that the money expires whether Congress approves the changes or not. In other words, this year, Congress could allow Congressionally appropriated dollars expire.

Lieberman quotes Sarah Abernathy, who served for a decade as executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a federal budget advocacy group: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an administration say, ‘We have tons of authority to make our own decisions about funding levels for programs.’ “