Putin wants to blame Ukraine for Moscow attack: Zelensky

WASHINGTON : President Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to Washington — and his latest target is the US Department of Education.
Trump has described it as ineffective, wasteful and dominated by radical leftists, and in an interview airing Sunday told Fox News he would order Elon Musk, the man leading his cost-cutting efforts, to turn his sights next on the Education Department.
Underscoring his intention, the Republican president had earlier directed Linda McMahon, his education secretary nominee, to “put herself out of a job.”
Democratic politicians, teachers’ unions and many parents are in an uproar, calling Trump’s plan to shut down the agency an assault on public education.
Conservative groups, on the other hand, hail it as a long-overdue measure to reassert local control over American classrooms. But they acknowledge that the task of winding down the vast department will not be easy.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union, said closing down the Education Department would be devastating for students with disabilities, low-income students and other children at risk.
“If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students... and gut student civil rights protections,” Pringle said, adding that the union will oppose the plan.

Gutting the Education Department is part of a broader effort by Trump and his tech billionaire adviser Musk to radically trim the US federal government.
The administration has already attempted to close down the US humanitarian agency and to put thousands of federal workers on leave. It has also offered buyouts to tens of thousands — efforts that sent shock waves around Washington and that are now being challenged in courts.
Traditionally, the federal government has had a limited role in education in the United States, with only about 13 percent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, according to the NEA, the rest being funded by states and local communities.
But federal funding is invaluable for low-income schools and students with special needs.
And the federal government has been essential in enforcing key civil rights protections for students, such as the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in public schools, or a 1990 federal law guaranteeing access to education for students with disabilities.
“There’s been a traditional federal role in trying to make sure that the most disadvantaged kids get what they need. And the civil rights enforcement is important,” said Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

Trump has shown a willingness to use federal power to regulate school policy. Earlier this week he issued an executive order to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports in schools and universities.
Lindsey Burke, head of education policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, hailed Trump’s plan to get rid of the federal department, saying it has failed to improve academic standards, with American students continuing to lag behind their international peers.
Burke argues that education decisions must be made at the local level.
“Kids in South Carolina are different than kids in California, right? I mean, this is the United States, it’s a vast and diverse country,” said Burke.
“It is no service to families to put those dollars in the hands of distant federal bureaucrats who do not know these children’s names or their hopes or dreams or aspirations.”

But putting the education secretary out of a job might be easier said than done.
By law, the Education Department can be shut down only by an act of Congress, and most experts agree Trump lacks the votes to do that.
“This is mostly a talking point, it’s not going to happen,” said Petrilli. “A few weeks from now, I think this will be in the rearview mirror.”
It’s unclear how the Trump administration will proceed with its efforts to dismantle the department. Burke said it might seek to move some of its key units — civil rights enforcement, student loan servicing, statistics — to other agencies.
But Kevin Carey, head of education policy at the liberal New America think tank, fears the administration is now in a “strange territory of extralegality” and will not be shy about dismantling the agency one way or another.
“I think the question isn’t, ‘Will Congress abolish the Department of Education?’ It won’t. The question is, ‘Will Trump destroy the Department of Education on his own?” Carey told AFP.
Trump’s education secretary pick, McMahon, is a former professional wrestling executive with little experience in education — and known for once slapping her daughter during a televised wrestling match.
McMahon’s US Senate confirmation hearing is set for Thursday.
 

VILNIUS: The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed a switch from Russia’s electricity grid to the EU’s system on Sunday, severing Soviet-era ties amid heightened security after the suspected sabotage of several subsea cables and pipelines.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the move, years in the planning, as marking a new era of freedom for the region, in a speech at a ceremony in Vilnius alongside the leaders of the three countries and the Polish president.
“These chains of power lines linking you to hostile neighbors will be a thing of the past,” von der Leyen said.
Debated for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord gained momentum following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It is designed to integrate the three Baltic nations more closely with the European Union and to boost the region’s energy security.
“This is freedom, freedom from threats, freedom from blackmail,” von der Leyen said, adding that the wider European continent was also liberating itself from the use of Russian natural gas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address that Kyiv had taken the same step in 2022 “and the Baltic states are also ridding themselves of this dependence.
“Moscow will no longer be able to use energy as a weapon against the Baltic states.”
After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network, established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 meters from the Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.

HIGH ALERT
The Baltic Sea region is on high alert following power cable, telecom and gas pipeline outages between the Baltics and Sweden or Finland. All were believed to have been caused by ships dragging anchors along the seabed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has denied any involvement.
Poland and the Baltics deployed navy assets, elite police units and helicopters to monitor the area after an undersea power link from Finland to Estonia was damaged in December, while Lithuania’s military began drills to protect the overland connection to Poland.
Analysts say any further damage to links could push power prices in the Baltics to levels not seen since the invasion of Ukraine, when energy prices soared.
The IPS/UPS grid was the final remaining link to Russia for the three countries, which re-emerged as independent nations in the early 1990s at the fall of the Soviet Union, and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.
The three staunch supporters of Kyiv stopped purchases of power from Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but have relied on the Russian grid to control frequencies and stabilize networks to avoid outages.
Analysts say that maintaining a constant power supply requires a stable grid frequency, which can more easily be obtained over time in a large synchronized area such as Russia or continental Europe, compared to what the Baltics can do on their own.
For Russia, the decoupling means its Kaliningrad exclave, located between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea, is cut off from Russia’s main grid, leaving it to maintain its power system alone.
The Kremlin said it has taken all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted, reliable operation in its electricity system, including the construction of several gas-fired power plants in Kaliningrad.