Trump order to close Education Department sparks congressional action, lawsuits

Lawmakers, school advocates and teachers’ unions are taking swift action after President Donald Trump’s executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education, one of his most controversial moves yet.

Opponents of Trump’s action responded with promises of legal retaliation. But supportive lawmakers may beat them to the chase, with U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., each planning to introduce legislation to completely eliminate the department.

“I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,” Cassidy said. “Since the Department can only be shut down with Congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”

Rounds said he is already discussing legislation with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “that would return education decisions to states and local school districts while maintaining important programs like special education and Title I.”

Trump already shrunk the department’s workforce to half its size last week. His executive order Thursday directs McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” as far as legally possible.

For now, that means the department like enforcing Title IX and civil rights laws, funding special education and disability programs, and overseeing student loans and Pell grants, Trump said. On Friday, Trump said the Small Business Administration would take over the nation’s student loans.

But the ultimate goal is to redistribute these programs among other federal departments and agencies, which would require congressional approval.

School choice organizations are praising Trump’s plan to eventually eliminate the Education Department as a necessary development that will save taxpayers’ money and return power to states, local governments, and parents.

“These are the first steps towards reforming an American education system that should have always been a state and local proposition,” Parents Defending Education Vice President Sarah Parshall Perry said. “We are looking forward to continuing our mission to empower parents and students in educational environments that are once again value-neutral, and devoid of radical ideologies”

Supporters also point to how the department has spent $3 trillion taxpayer dollars since its creation by congressional legislation in 1979. Meanwhile, U.S. students rank 28 out of 37 member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and standardized test scores have remained flat for decades.

ACE Scholarships, which provides aid to lower-income K-12 students, said in a statement that the Department of Education’s efforts have been “a wasteful distraction” and that the president’s “new approach” to education “puts children first by increasing choice and empowering parents instead of Washington bureaucrats.”

But public school advocacy organizations and teachers unions are already preparing lawsuits against what they say is an unconstitutional move.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers, had a simple message for Trump after the executive order: “See you in court.”

The New York-based United Federation of Teachers stated that “we are working with our partners to file lawsuits to stop this executive overreach.”

Democracy Forward, a legal services nonprofit, is also planning to join the fight.

“We will be filing litigation against this action and will use every legal tool to ensure that the rights of students, teachers, and families are fully protected,” President and CEO Skye Perryman stated. “Since Inauguration Day, the Trump-Vance administration has been taken to court more than 100 times, and we will do it again this time.”

Trump opponents argue that dismantling the department will cause property taxes to spike nationwide, strain public school resources and could cause struggling schools to close, expanding class sizes in the remaining schools.

“Beyond the obvious issue that the Education Department can’t be eliminated without an act of Congress, Trump’s order is yet another wild and illicit power grab,” Co-President of Public Citizen Lisa Gilbert said. “Attempting to destroy the cabinet agencies tasked with promoting and improving education isn’t just irresponsible, it is immoral, and will hurt the very fabric of our nation, as we keep generations of students from achieving their full potential.”

The Education department provides roughly 10% of funding for public education, with the vast majority of funding coming from state and local taxes.

The majority of Americans also appear opposed to ending the department, with a Marist poll in early March showing 63% of U.S. residents either oppose or strongly oppose getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education, while 37% of residents either strongly support or support abolishing the department.

Thérèse Boudreaux

Related Topics:#TheCenterSquare DepartmentOfEducation ThereseBoudreaux TrumpClosingEducationDepartment

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Land use will be British Columbia’s biggest issue in 2026

Published on December 31, 2025

Todayville

By Resource Works

By Geoff Russ

British Columbia will talk about Donald Trump’s tariffs in 2026, and it will keep grinding through affordability. But the issue that will decide whether the province can build, invest, and govern is land use.

The warning signs were there in 2024. Land based industries still generate 12 per cent of B.C.’s GDP, and the province controls more than 90 per cent of the land base, and land policy was already being remade through opaque processes, including government to government tables. When rules for access to land feel unsettled, money flows slow into a trickle.

The Cowichan ruling sends shockwaves

In August 2025, the Cowichan ruling turned that unease into a live wire. The court recognized the Cowichan’s Aboriginal title over roughly 800 acres within Richmond, including lands held by governments and unnamed third parties. It found that grants of fee simple and other interests unjustifiably infringed that title, and declared certain Canada and Richmond titles and interests “defective and invalid,” with those invalidity declarations suspended for 18 months to give governments time to make arrangements.

The reaction has been split. Supporters see a reminder that constitutional rights do not evaporate because land changed hands. Critics see a precedent that leaves private owners exposed, especially because unnamed owners in the claim area were not parties to the case and did not receive formal notice. Even the idea of “coexistence” has become contentious, because both Aboriginal title and fee simple convey exclusive rights to decide land use and capture benefits.

Market chill sets in

McLTAikins translated the risk into advice that landowners and lenders can act on: registered ownership is not immune from constitutional scrutiny, and the land title system cannot cure a constitutional defect where Aboriginal title is established. Their explanation of fee simple reads less like theory than a due diligence checklist that now reaches beyond the registry.

By December, the market was answering. National Post columnist Adam Pankratz reported that an industrial landowner within the Cowichan title area lost a lender and a prospective tenant after a $35 million construction loan was pulled. He also described a separate Richmond hotel deal where a buyer withdrew after citing precedent risk, even though the hotel was not within the declared title lands. His case that uncertainty is already changing behaviour is laid out in Montrose.

Caroline Elliott captured how quickly court language moved into daily life after a City Richmond letter warned some owners that their title might be compromised. Whatever one thinks of that wording, it pushed land law out of the courtroom and into the mortgage conversation.

Mining and exploration stall

The same fault line runs through the critical minerals push. A new mineral claims regime now requires consultation before claims are approved, and critics argue it slows early stage exploration and forces prospectors to reveal targets before they can secure rights. Pankratz made that critique earlier, in his argument about mineral staking.

Resource Works, summarising AME feedback on Mineral Tenure Act modernisation, reported that 69.5 per cent of respondents lacked confidence in proposed changes, and that more than three quarters reported increased uncertainty about doing business in B.C. The theme is not anti consultation. It is that process, capacity, and timelines decide whether consultation produces partnership or paralysis.

The legal layer

Layered on top is the widening fight over UNDRIP implementation and DRIPA. Geoffrey Moyse, KC, called for repeal in a Northern Beat essay on DRIPA, arguing that Section 35 already provides the constitutional framework and that trying to operationalise UNDRIP invites litigation and uncertainty.

Tariffs and housing will still dominate headlines. But they are downstream of land. Until B.C. offers a stable bargain over who can do what, where, and on what foundation, every other promise will be hostage to the same uncertainty. For a province still built on land based wealth, Resource Works argues in its institutional history that the resource economy cannot be separated from land rules. In 2026, that is the main stage.

Resource Works News

Business

What Do Loyalty Rewards Programs Cost Us?

Published on December 31, 2025

Todayville

The Audit

You’ve certainly been asked (begged!) to join up for at least one loyalty “points” program – like PC Optimum, Aeroplan, or Hilton Honors – over the years. And the odds are that you’re currently signed up for at least one of them. In fact, the average person apparently belongs to at no less than 14 programs. Although, ironically, you’ll need to sign up to an online equivalent of a loyalty program to read the source for that number.

Well all that warm, fuzzy “belonging” comes with some serious down sides. Let’s see how much they might cost us.

To be sure, there’s real money involved here. Canadians redeem at least two billion dollars in program rewards each year, and payouts will often represent between one and ten percent of the original purchase value.

At the same time, it’s estimated that there could be tens of billions of unredeemed dollars due to expirations, shifting program terms, and simple neglect. So getting your goodies isn’t automatic.

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Just why do consumer-facing corporations agree to give away so much money in the fist place?

As you probably already know, it’s about your data. Businesses are willing to pay cold, hard cash in exchange for detailed descriptions of your age, sex, ethnicity, wealth, location, employment status, hobbies, preferences, medical conditions, political leanings, and, of course, shopping habits.

Don’t believe it works? So then why, after all these years, are points programs still giving away billions of dollars?

Every time you participate in such a program, the data associated with that activity will be collected and aggregated along with everything else known about you. It’s more than likely that points-based data is being combined with everything connected to your mobile phone account, email addresses, credit cards, provincial health card, and – possibly – your Social Insurance number. The depth and accuracy of your digital profile improves daily.

What happens to all that data? A lot of it is shared with – or sold to – partners or affiliates for marketing purposes. Some of it is accidentally (or intentionally) leaked to organized criminal gangs driving call center-related scams. But it’s all about getting to know you better in ways that maximize someone’s profits.

One truly scary way this data is used involves surveillance pricing (also known as price discrimination) – particularly as it’s described in a recent post by Professor Sylvain Charlebois.

The idea is that retailers will use your digital profile to adjust the prices you pay at the cash register or when you’re shopping online. The more loyal you are as a customer, the more you’ll pay. That’s because regular (“loyal”) customers are already reliable revenue sources. Companies don’t need to spend anything to build a relationship with you. But they’re more than willing to give up a few percentage points to gain new friends.

I’m not talking about the kind of price discrimination that might lead to higher prices for sales in, say, urban locations to account for higher real estate and transportation costs. Those are just normal business decisions.

What Professor Charlebois described is two customers paying different prices for the same items in the same stores. In fact, a recent Consumer Reports experiment in the U.S. involving 437 shoppers in four cities found the practice to be quite common.

But the nasty bit here is that there’s growing evidence that retailers are using surveillance pricing in grocery stores for basic food items. Extrapolating from the Consumer Reports study, such pricing could be adding $1,200 annually to a typical family’s spending on basic groceries.

I’m not sure what the solution is. It’s way too late to “unenroll” from our loyalty accounts. And government intervention would probably just end up making things worse.

But perhaps getting the word out about what’s happening could spark justified mistrust in the big retailers. No retailer enjoys dealing with grumpy customers.

Be grumpy.

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