How much longer will our fellow citizens tolerate the dreadful performance of our public schools? It's arguably the greatest threat to our nation.
The latest Nation's Report Card test scores are dismal. The crash that started with COVID-era school closures (which we opposed from the start!) has continued in almost every state.
The top 25 percent of 8th graders have seen math scores rebound a little bit from 2022, but are still below 2019. The other 75 percent of kids' scores have continued to drop:
Reading is even worse:
The massive, unprecedented infusion of federal funds into schools under the guise of COVID recovery has abjectly failed to improve outcomes - but it has enriched the teacher unions.
The one bright spot is Louisiana, which has restored rigorous instruction to its curriculum with positive results:
That gives us some cause for hope that school systems can improve their performance. But, until every child has an exit option from the public schools, expect to be further disappointed about how little kids are learning.
2) Don't Worry, We Graduate More Gender Studies and Sociology Majors
While we're on the subject of school daze, our friend John Mauldin of Mauldineconomics.com wonders whether the news of China's Deepseek AI breakthroughs means America may be facing another "Sputnik Moment."
America has completely dominated the global tech sector for fifty years, but U.S. tech leadership now may be hard to maintain in the years ahead. This chart showing that China graduates more than five times as many iSTEM students each year is certainly worrisome.
The silver lining is that if OUR kids aren't learning math and science skills, we can always hand out visas to the brainiacs of the world who are, and make them Americans. Or maybe we can trade our sociologists for their math wizzes.
Can Trump fire members of boards and commissions who would thwart his agenda, or are they an impervious fourth branch of government subject to removal only for misconduct? We will now see this question put before the courts sooner rather than later.
Trump has fired one of the NLRB's Democratic members - even though the statute purports to prohibit firing except for cause.
This was an unexpected move because of the drama last month when Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked Schumer's attempt to lock in a 3-2 Democratic advantage. There were only two Democrats on the board, so Trump could have taken control just by filling the vacant seats.
But he fired Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox anyway.
Wilcox says she'll sue. We think that's exactly what Trump wants, in the hopes of getting the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey's Executor, the 1935 case that upheld limitations on the president's removal power. We think the Chevron decision - which essentially says that reg agencies need congressional and/or exec branch oversight - is a hopeful sign.
As we reported the other day, Trump's approval rating is at an all-time high, but his agenda is even more popular.
Morning Consult has the first national poll to measure voter approval of President Trump's handling of the major issues and almost all are solidly positive.
Trump's approval rating on the economy is 17 points higher than his disapproval rating, 20 points higher on immigration and 13 points higher on trade. Out of 12 key issues, Trump has a net disapproval rating only on abortion and "LGBTQ+ rights."
Hmmm. Maybe it's not such a radical agenda after all.
When you think this kind of naked corruption is extinct in America, there is Mayor Johnson, keeping a secret room of luxury gifts hidden from investigators.
We wonder how embarrassed all the upper-class whites who voted for Johnson out of liberal guilt are, now that they know the Mayor they voted into office is no social justice warrior, but just a two-bit crook. And not a very good one at that.
But at least he didn't keep stacks of gold bars in the basement.
