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The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Psyched! He's closing the Department of Education in Washignton (sic) DC", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster, who managed to misspell the name of our country's capital city, very excitedly posted a video of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump saying that he would "close down" the U.S. Department of Education. Trump's plan is to send the Department's functions back to the states. While my predictive powers have been shown wanting recently, I am fairly confident in suggesting that the next several years will feature a torrent of complaints about leopards eating faces from those who voted for the leopards eating faces party. In fact, I expect that this cliché will be used so often in coming years that, if you are not sick of hearing it already, you will be soon. Nowhere is that more likely than in the event that Trump is actually successful in shuttering the Department of Education. It is pretty clear from the get-go that most MAGAs have no idea what the department actually does. Nor do they understand the right-wing motives for getting rid of it. What they know is that their cult leader supports it and, therefore, it must be good. That's enough to provoke this moment of near ecstasy from the original poster. As several posters point out, Trump doesn't actually have the power to shut down the department. That would require Congressional legislation. With a Republican majority in the Senate and a probable majority in the House, such legislation might be possible. However, given the Senate's filibuster and the very slight majority House Republicans are likely to have, passing any controversial legislation could be a struggle. As a result, MAGAs may be saved from themselves. But, in the case that they are not, they will likely be surprised by the results. Some of the MAGA posters in this thread believe that there is a national school curriculum that the Department of Education oversees. Of course, no such curriculum exists. Similarly, many of the MAGAs are convinced that it is this national curriculum that has resulted in "woke" education such as teaching about LGBTQ issues. They believe that with authority over education returned to the states, curriculums will return to emphasizing the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. What is more likely, however, is that there will be fragmentation as states take different paths. Based on what we have seen so far, Republican states, far from returning to the basics, will focus on putting religion, specifically Christianity, into the classroom. Oklahoma, for instance, has already decreed that every classroom must have a Bible. By sheer coincidence, the only Bible that meets the state's requirements is the one sold by Trump. Many of the liberal posters warn that another result will be to weaken, if not destroy completely, public education. They suggest that some states will favor vouchers and charter schools — including those run by for-profit organizations — instead of traditional public schools. The biggest fear cited by posters is the impact on special education. Currently, funding for special education programs comes from the Department of Education. If that funding goes away, states will need to fund such programs themselves. Poor states, which tend to be Republican states, will likely be hit harder than states with more money. This highlights why liberals should be cautious about taking pleasure in seeing MAGAs "finding out". As in this case, where the impact would likely fall on kids with special needs in red states, the victims of MAGA policies will tend to be powerless innocents.