For all the hand-wringing over Donald Trump in the past decade, I think his detractors on the right need to take a moment and consider what this president has accomplished.
SCOTUS backs Trump plan to fire Education Dept. workers
A divided Supreme Court backed Trump’s plan to dismantle the Education Dept. and fire hundreds of federal workers, despite a judge’s earlier pause.
He’ll destroy the Republican Party.
He’ll end democracy.
He’s not a conservative.
He’s a bad guy who can’t be trusted.
For all the hand-wringing over Donald Trump in the past decade, I think his detractors on the right need to take a moment and consider what this president has accomplished.
He’s racking up huge conservative wins that no other Republican president in modern history has come close to matching.
What others only talked about, Trump is doing.
I’ll walk you through some of the biggest wins.
Taxpayers are now free from funding liberal NPR. Hallelujah.
I’ve advocated for ending taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS for years. So it came as welcome news that Congress last week finally rescinded funding for these progressive outlets.
From the start of his second term, Trump made it clear this was a priority for him. And he worked with the slim GOP majority in Congress to make it happen.
House Republicans made it official on July 18, voting to axe about $1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates the funds to stations across the country.
“This vote is an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will,” Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, complained.
Here’s the thing. If the stations are so beloved by their local communities, then local residents and businesses are more than welcome to donate to the cause.
But there is not a First Amendment requirement for the government (taxpayers) to fund any specific outlet – especially one that so glaringly ignores the perspectives of half the country.
This has been a purported Republican goal for years, but squishy conservatives facing reelection didn’t want to be the ones to pull the plug on Big Bird.
In fact, according to PBS, every Republican administration (save for Gerald Ford) has sought to cut funding for CPB since its inception in 1967.
Only Trump succeeded.
Trump is dismantling the Education Department, like Reagan wanted to do
As he promised, Trump is also working to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, a behemoth of bureaucracy that has done nothing to improve education in the country.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court greenlighted his efforts to slash the department’s workforce in half, an action that began in March with an executive order.
Trump celebrated the victory on social media, saying his administration can follow through with his goal of giving “the Power back to the PEOPLE” in regard to education.
Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary during Trump’s first term, has told me that she is 100% on board with closing the Education Department and empowering the states, which should be the level of government that oversees public schools.
Much of the work the department does could easily transfer to other branches of government, as it was done before the Education Department’s creation in 1979 under Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
Since that time, Republicans have regularly advocated for doing away with the department.
President Ronald Reagan, the darling of conservatives, talked about doing this in the 1980s, although he didn’t follow through.
In 1996, the Republican Party platform included abolishing the department and ending “federal meddling in our schools” and promoting school choice.
Yet, it took Trump to get the job done. He’s also taken a strong lead in expanding education options for families. The “big, beautiful bill” he just signed into law creates the first federal private school choice tax credit program.
As the American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus told CNN, “Trump’s big changes in education are the federal retreat many conservatives have long called for, with some new attacks added in for good measure.”
And don’t forget about Roe v. Wade
Last but not least, Trump is the one to thank for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since 1973, when the Supreme Court fashioned a constitutional “right” to abortion, conservatives had fought hard to overturn it.
During his first term, Trump had the exceptional opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court justices, which effectively sealed the court’s conservative majority for years to come.
His excellent choices of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett paved the way for the groundbreaking decision that gave abortion regulation back to the states, where it belongs.
The Never Trumpers have told us Trump is bad news for the Republican Party.
Those of us who line up on the right can’t look at these significant conservative wins, however, and not be thoroughly impressed.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques
