I couldn’t leave today’s post without mentioning the least-covered story in today’s corporate media headlines. Of major media, only the British BBC ran a clear headline this morning: “Trump signs order to dismantle US education department.” You may have hoped, but did you ever think you’d live to see it? Yet more historic surreality.
CLIP: President Trump signs executive order to dismantle the DOE (0:41).
President Trump signed the long-coveted executive order yesterday, surrounded by smiling schoolchildren seated at desks signing their own little executive orders. During the signing ceremony, the President praised newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon, saying he hoped she would be America’s last education secretary, and promising he would soon find “something else” for her to do.
Afterward, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) announced plans to bring legislation aimed at completely closing the department. It’s a long shot, since Republicans still need 60 votes to beat the Senate filibuster, but still.
Trump’s short order directed Secretary McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department, and to return authority of education matters to state and local governments. Even if the department is not formally shuttered, the Trump administration can strip DOE’s funding and staff, like it did with USAID.
The order’s policy statement recounted the DOE’s miserable record of failure. “American reading and math scores are near historical lows,” it said, adding that “70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”
“Ultimately,” the order said, “the Department of Education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.”
But that wasn’t all!
President Trump signed three executive orders yesterday, keeping up the blistering pace of DOGE reform. His second game-changing EO was also widely ignored by mockingbird media, but was reported by Federal News Network under the bland headline, “Draft EO would make GSA the center of most common buys.”
Titled “Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement”, the new order requires for the first time all government purchasing to flow through the General Services Agency. It was wonky, but no less revolutionary.
Right now, agencies all run their own purchasing departments. That is obviously inefficient, but more importantly, it conceals waste and abuse in the detritus of a thousand unconnected databases and individualized processes. Under cover of disorganization, agencies can dole out lucrative contracts to favored friends and political patrons.
Centralizing federal procurement under GSA is a direct assault on swampy patronage networks. No more fiefdoms, no more “coincidentally awarded” contracts to somebody’s brother’s solar startup in Loudoun County. It was the bureaucratic equivalent of forcing every pirate to check in at Port Royal.
The Wild West period of federal purchasing is now ending. For the first time in modern history, the government will maintain a centralized, transparent database of government purchases of all domestic goods and services. To help, DOGE developers have designed an AI tool to help purchasing agents timely review and approve purchase requests.
DOGE’s consolidated software and AI system could potentially be an unhackable audit trail highlighting favoritism like a neon mole stuck on a naked mole rat.
It wasn’t just reform, it was revolutionary infrastructure.
Rounding out the trifecta, Trump’s third and longest order was titled, “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production.” The BBC reported the under-covered story yesterday, headlined “Trump uses wartime powers to boost mineral production.”
The order —signed personally, not by AutoPen— invoked the President’s emergency powers under the Defense Production Act, waiving reams of regulations and permit procedures, and expediting extraction of America’s “critical minerals.”
I guess he got tired of waiting for Zelensky to sign that rare minerals deal. Haha, just kidding. The order was carefully drafted. My guess is it was prepared well before Trump took office.
Trump’s minerals order installed a pacemaker in the heart of one of America’s most dangerous strategic vulnerabilities: our deep dependence on foreign adversaries —chiefly China— for the critical rocks powering everything from smartphones to fighter jets. By invoking the Defense Production Act to fast-track domestic mining, the order bypassed decades of bureaucratic inertia and green tape. It launches a wartime-level, urgent effort to secure the critical supply chains essential for our national security.
It’s not just about minerals. The geopolitical implications are staggering. In one personally-signed stroke, the U.S. has nimbly repositioned itself to challenge China’s near-monopoly on rare earths, reduce our reliance on unstable global markets, and reassert control over the key raw materials underpinning 21st-century progress.
It was also a major step toward world peace. Trump’s minerals order could significantly de-escalate tensions over Taiwan— by undercutting one of the key strategic drivers behind the conflict: China’s near-total control over critical mineral supply chains.
Most of Washington’s urgency to defend Taiwan stems not just from vague notions of democratic solidarity, but from the island’s practical role in semiconductor production and the region’s grip on rare earth elements essential to America’s tech and defense sectors.
By fast-tracking domestic mining, and reducing dependency on Chinese exports, the executive order starts cutting off the economic fuse that makes Taiwan a geopolitical powder keg. A self-sufficient America is a less desperate America— one that can afford diplomatic deterrence instead of being dragged toward military confrontation.
Biden couldn’t do things peacefully because he was politically shackled to his green constituencies. For his administration, more mining on U.S. soil was simply off-limits—sacrilege to the climate faithful. Ironically, to most environmentalists, a war over Taiwan is better than a domestic dig site.
Trump ended the argument with a stroke of the pen: we’re developing America’s resources, not starting World War III. By invoking his emergency powers to unleash critical mineral production, he didn’t just break the regulatory logjam—he pulled the plug on the false choice between ecological purity and geopolitical survival.
Altogether, the three new orders constitute three more body blows to the administrative state. Couple them with the JFK files blowtorch being taken to the deep state, and yesterday wasn’t just a big news cycle.
It was regime change.
The Washington D.C. Swamp needs to be totally decontaminated and remade the Demo-Rats left a mess