Hear Ye, Hear Ye, New Holy Executive Orders Just Dropped!

Bye colleges, hello AI!

Oh boy, let’s see what Dear Leader has decreed today! Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Dear Leader signed 10 Holy Executive Orders last night. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll say, “this is the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen!” Starting with how they all begin “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,” and then decreeing rules that the Constitution makes clear are supposed to be made by Congress.

An Executive Order is a wish list, a statement of intent, it is not law. But with Congress rolling over and playing dead, and the Supreme Court willing to let him do just about whatever, the orders are more like “this is what’s happening until a court steps in to stop it.” Okay, probably you won’t laugh. We were just trying to hook you with the lede.

So what is this pile of dogshit, let’s see! Most of them are about giving the government even more new, unprecedented powers to control schools, so it can effectively shut down colleges by taking their ability to offer financial aid, and/or micromanage what they teach.

There’s Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at Universities; Trump insists that a whole lot of foreign money is flowing into universities, and the universities are hiding it, so he wants to “protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments.” Hoo boy is that rich, coming from the guy who has never met a Russian talking point he doesn’t repeat! Surprise, surprise, this is one more way to threaten, probe, and extort universities into giving up their academic freedom to become mouthpieces of the state, and to harass Harvard some more, in particular.

White House staff secretary Will Scharf gave away the game: “We believe that certain universities, including, for example, Harvard, have routinely violated this law, and this law has not been effectively enforced.” Oh, let me just pull an example out of thin air, shall we say, could it be, HARVARD?

Federal law already requires schools to disclose gifts or contracts worth $250,000 or more from foreign entities, but with this EO there’s no threshold. So with this, the government could theoretically yank federal grants for universities if they’re found to have a nickel of foreign funding they did not disclose.

And there’s more: He’s taking on college accreditation!

“President Trump is tackling the broken accreditation system that has left students with soaring debt, low graduation rates, and degrees of questionable value.” Hoo boy is that rich, coming from the guy who was found to have defrauded students with Trump University, which was not a University, but expensive talks online and in hotel ballrooms that promised to “turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you.”

So now he wants to be able to take accreditation from colleges that are suspected of doing DEI and not prioritizing “intellectual diversity among faculty” so Linda McMahon will choose new accreditors to do the blessing and/or yanking. For a department he just executive-order closed a month ago, he’s sure keeping rasslin’ Linda busy.

Colleges need to be accredited to access Title IV funding, the $120 billion in federal financial aid that’s doled out to about 10 million students each year, so this is a way to effectively drown in a bucket whatever colleges they would like to without going through the hassle of yanking their funding one by one. Accreditation started in an official kind of way with the GI Bill in the 1950s, because the government wanted to make sure that veterans using GI Bill funds to go to college weren’t getting ripped off by some kind of early version of Trump University. What Congress maketh, Executive Orders can’t taketh away, so, see you in court! Hope all you colleges have a lot of lawyer money.

And, but, then he goes on to decree we shall strengthen Historically Black Colleges and Universities. How nice! I was sure the guy was going to claim they were RACIST, but he says he wants to help them out, by having the EPA (why the EPA?) terminate the HBCU and Minority Serving Institutions Advisory Council, revoking Biden’s Executive Order on White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity Through Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and instead making a new presidential council to oversee them, which will increase the private-sector role.

Strengthen them how? Here is maybe a clue, the next EO declares he wants to prepare Americans for the High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future, to “meet the needs of the future with a focus on registered apprenticeships.” Ah, now we see where this is going, probably somewhere like: “Hey Morgan State University, our board says you shall be getting rid of your doctoral programs in English and History and offer plumbing apprenticeships instead.”

Those orders should be plenty enough to give the administration near-complete control over all of the schools, right? Ho ho, he’s just getting started! There’s “restoring equality of opportunity,” which instructs the attorney general to “repeal or amend” Title VI regulations that include “disparate impact liability,” which is a big part of class-action discrimination lawsuits. The Biden administration had advised school districts that they may be in violation of civil rights law if they unfairly discipline students from different groups, and the new executive order revokes that and directs federal agencies to deprioritize enforcing civil rights laws that rely on disparate-impact claims. That affects not just education, but also housing, lending, and employment. (Unless they are Christians being discriminated against, probably.) And hoo boy, that’s mighty rich coming from a guy who got sued by Richard Nixon for a pattern of discrimination in his buildings!

In the meantime, it’s been a “bloodbath” at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, more than a dozen of its lawyers have quit after Trump appointed Harmeet Dhillon, a culture warrior whose previous experience includes suing the city of San Jose, on behalf of Trump supporters who were attacked by counterprotesters, and representing Google employee James Damore, who was fired after he circulated a 10-page screed arguing that chicks are lamers and diversity gives him the sads. Remember him?

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An Argument About Nerds And The KKK Taken As Seriously As It Deserves

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But we digress! There is also an order to make a task force to “promote AI literacy” in students starting in kindergarten, so they can learn about the robot overlords that will replace them after they grow up to toil in manufacturing. Here is ONE most important thing to know about AI, kids, the error rate for American AI products is 62 percent, so you shouldn’t rely on it for anything more crucial than making videos of Trump sewing Nikes in a factory.

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Donald Trump Wants Your Children To Get AI In School So He Looks Like Rambo To Them Too

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Other EOs: that April 20-27 are days of Holocaust-victim remembrance, and April 20 through April 26, 2025, is National Volunteer Week, and also proclaiming that April 19 through April 27, 2025 is National Park Week, though that is eight days, and all of these weeks are already more than half over. But the 1,000 workers cut from the Park Service and 3,400 people laid off from the Forest Service surely appreciate the sentiment of making an eight-day week for them! And he encourages everyone to visit the national parks, even if the trails are closed and trash is piling up because there’s no one there to collect it, and toilets are backing up because there’s no one to plumb them.

And, he is establishing the “National Garden of American Heroes — a new monument honoring 250 American patriots who embodied the virtues of courage, love of country, and devotion to our Nation’s highest ideals.” Can’t wait to see who makes that cut. Maybe there will be a bronze statue of Steve Bannon! Too bad there won’t be enough park service employees to keep its jowls polished to the finest shine.

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